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BV  113  .W6  1880 

Wood,  Will  C.  b.  1839, 

Sabbath  essays 


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SABBATH    ESSAYS 


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PRESENTED    AT    THE    MASSACHUSETTS    SABBATH 

CONVENTIONS,   AT    BOSTON    AND 

SPRINGFIELD, 


OCTOBER,    1879. 

EDITED  BY 

Rev.  V^ILL   C.  wood, 


BOSTON : 

CONGREGATIONAL   PUBLISHING   SOCIETY, 

CONGREGATIONAL   HOUSE, 

BEACON    STREET. 


Copyright,  1880, 
By  Congregational  Publishing  Society, 


ELECTROTYPED    BY   C.    J.    PETERS    AND    SON, 
73    FEDERAL   STREET,    BOSTON. 


/ro 


PREFACE. 


This  book  seeks  to  embody  in  the  most  readable  form  for  the 
general  public  the  material  portions  of  the  essays  and  addresses 
presented  at  the  Massachusetts  Sabbath  Conventions ;  and  also,  as 
far  as  practicable,  to  be  a  memorial  of  the  conventions.  Some 
matter  has  necessarily  been  omitted ;  transpositions  in  the  order 
of  the  papers  have  been  made ;  the  historical  account  of  the  con- 
ventions has  been  set  at  the  end  of  the  book ;  and,  of  the  less 
formal  evening  addresses,  excerpts  only  have  been  given  of  the 
most  suggestive  facts  and  sentiments. 

These  essays  were  intended  to  present  and  maintain  —  with 
generous  latitude  allowable  to  independence  of  thought  —  the 
views  enunciated  in  the  "Statement  of  Principles."  In  their  total- 
ity, and,  in  the  main,  in  the  separate  papers,  they  are  representa- 
tive of  the  conventions.  We  publish  them,  leaving  each  writer 
and  speaker  responsible  for  his  own  utterances. 

The  papers  of  Rev.  Drs.  Mallalieu  and  Alden,  omitted  in  de- 
livery, are  given  in  these  pages.  President  Woolsey's  address, 
read  at  St.  Louis  a  few  days  after  our  conventions,  is  substituted 
for  the  paper  which  —  to  his  regret  and  ours  —  Judge  William 
Strong  of  the  United-States  Supreme  Court  was  at  the  last  mo- 
ment prevented  from  preparing.  Rev.  President  Seelye's  opening 
address  at  Springfield  he  did  not  revise  for  publication.  Excerpts 
from  Rev.  A.  A.  Wright's  address,  ''Church  Members  and  the 
Sabbath,"  are  withheld  at  his  request. 

3 


PREFACE. 


A  full  account  of  the  addresses  and  of  the  conventions  will  be 
found  in  the  historical  statement  at  the  close  of  the  volume. 

The  conventions  will  have  gained  one  of  their  principal  objects, 
should  their  fruit  prove  a  volume  of  permanent  value  and  power. 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS, 


PAGB 

fs.   Opening  Address.    By  Rev.  Alexander  McKenzie,  D.D.,  of  Cambridge, 

^  Mass. I 

/\  The  Sacredness  of  the  Sabbath  Essential  and  Eternal.     By  Rev.  Joseph 

^"        T.  Duryea,  D.D.,  of  Boston 15 

ESSAYS. 

I.  — RATIONALE   OF  THE   SABBATH. 

first:  the  sabbath  in  nature. 
-^  The  Natural  Law  of  Weekly  Rest.     By  Rev.  W.  W.  Atterbury,  Secre- 
tary of  the  New-York  Sabbath  Committee 25 

N"  Physical,  Intellectual,  and  Economic  Advantages  of  the  Sabbath.     By 

Rev.  Joseph  Cook,  of  Boston 39 

'  The  Sabbath  a  Necessity  to  all  Forms  of  Social  Regeneration.     By 

Rev.  J.  O.  Peck,  D.D.,  of  Brooklyn,  N.Y 47 

•  ^-  The  Sabbath  and  the  Family.    By  Rev.  Henry  M.  King,  D.D.,  of  Boston,      64 
■  The  Religious  Character  and  Uses  of  the  Sabbath.     By  Rev.  A.  J. 

Gordon,  D.D.,  of  Boston 78 

second:  the  sabbath  in  the  word  of  god. 

The  Sabbath  of  the  Old  Testament :  its  Grounds  and  Method  of  In- 
fluence.    By  Rev.  Thomas  Armitage,  D.D.,  of  New  York       .        .      95 

Christ's  Connection  with  the  Sabbath.     By  Rev.  Henry  W.  Warren, 

D.D.,  of  Philadelphia 112 

St.  Paul  and  the  Sabbath.     By  Rev.  William  De  Loss  Love,  D.D.,  of 

South  Hadley 124 

Obligation  of  One  Rest-day  in  Seven :  so  that  the  Seventh-day  Rest  is 
Obligatory,  if  the  First  is  not.  By  Rev.  Professor  Henry  Lummis, 
of  Watertown 143 

The  Sabbath  and  the  Lord's  Day :  their  Permanent  Elements  and 
Legitimate  Union.  By  Rev.  Edmund  K.  Alden,  D.D.,  of  Boston, 
Secretary  A.B.C.F.M 156 

V 


vi  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


II.  — HISTORICAL. 

THE  SABBATH   IN    HISTORY. 

PAGE 

The  Pre-Mosaic  Sabbath.  By  Rev.  Joshua  T.  Tucker,  D.D.,  of  Boston,  185 
The  Sabbath  in  Jewish  History.     By  Rev.  Alvah  Hovey,  D.D.,  LL.D., 

President  of  Newton  Theological  Institution,  Newton  Centre,  Mass.  196 
The  Change  of  the  Sabbath  to  the  Lord's  Day.      By  Rev.  Professor 

Egbert  C.  Smyth,  D.D.,  of  Andover 214 

Constantine  and  the  Sabbath.      By  Rev.  Franklin   Johnson,  D.D.,  of 

Cambridge 238 

The  European  Sabbath  before  and  since  the  Reformation.     By  Rev. 

r         William  Rice,  D.D.,  of  Springfield 247  -^ 
The  American  Sabbath.     By  Rev.  Edward  S.  Atwood  of  Salem,  Mass.     262     ) 

IIL  — CIVIL  AND   SOCIAL. 

THE   SABBATH    IN   THE   STATE   AND    IN    SOCIETY. 

,      Civil  Law  and  the  Sabbath.     By  Rev.  Theo.  D.  Woolsey,  D.D.,  LL.D., 

of  New  Haven,  Conn 275 

The  Sabbath  and  Free  Institutions.     By  Rev.  President  E.  G.  Robin- 
son, D.D.,  of  Providence 291 

V     The  Law  of  Rest  for  All  Necessary  to  the  Liberty  of  Rest  for  Each. 

By  Rev.  Leonard  Woolsey  Bacon,  D.D.,  of  Norwich,  Conn.   .  ,      .     306 
i—.  The  Sabbath  and  our  Foreign  Population.     By  Rev.  Reuen  Thomas  of 

Brookline 318 

Corporations  and  the  Sabbath.     By  Rev.  Willard  F.  Mallalieu,  D.D., 

of  Chelsea 332 

The  Sabbath  and  Railroads  and  Steamboats.     By  Hon.  William  E. 

Dodge  of  New  York 342 

'The  Lord's  Day  and  the  Merchant.     By  Russell  Sturgis,  Jr.,  Esq.,  of 

Boston 357 

The  Sabbath  the  Poor  Man's  Benefactor.     By  Rev.  Edwin  B.  Webb, 

D.D.,  of  Boston 370 


ADDRESSES. 

The  Sabbath  not  Gone,  and  not  Going.  By  Rev.  A.  H.  Plumb  of  Bos- 
ton Highlands 384 

The  Cunard  Line's  Sabbath  Policy.     By  Rev.  Lewis  B.  Bates  of  East 

Boston 392 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS.  vii 

#                                                                                                                                                                                                    .  PAGE 

^    What  is  Sabbath-Keeping  ?     By  Rev.  Wm.  Barrows,  D.D.,  of  Reading,  395 

The  Sabbath  and  the  Children.     By  Rev.  Asa  Bullard  of  Cambridge,  397 
^^  Sunday  Observance   in  New  York  and  in  Europe.     By  Rev.  W.  W. 

Atterbury  of  New  York 401 

'  \  Rewards   of   Sabbath-Keeping.     By  Hon.  William   E.  Dodge  of  New 

York 407 

'  The    Sabbath  in  Foreign  Missions.      By  Rev.  N.  G.  Clark,  D.D.,  of 

Boston,  Secretary  A.B.C.F.M 411 

Right  Sabbath  Laws  a  Necessity.     By  Rev.  O.  P.  Gifford  of  Boston      .  412 
'   Our  Increasing  Material   Prosperity  demands  the   Sabbath.     By  Hon. 

Edward  S.  Tobey  of  Boston 414 

Co-operation  of  Friends   of  the  Sabbath.      By  Rev.  Yates  Hickey  of 

Philadelphia 419 

'  Horse-Cars  and  the  Sabbath.     By  M.  Field  Fowler,  Esq.,  of  Boston,     .  421' 
The  old  Paths  of  Obedience  to  God's  Laws.     By  Rev.  S.  F.  Upham, 

D.D.,  of  Boston 426 

Historical  Sketch      .        •        .  x     .        •        • 429 


SABBATH    ESSAYS. 


OPENING  ADDRESS. 

BY  REV.  ALEXANDER  McKENZIE,  D.D.,  OF  CAMBRIDGE,  MASS. 

Mr.  President  and  Brethren,  —  There  is  but  One 
who  by  right  and  by  the  gracious  declaration  of  his  good- 
ness to  men  is  entitled  to  open  a  sabbath  convention  ; 
and  he  is  the  One  who  opened  the  sabbath,  who  gave  the 
day  to  man,  and  who  alone  can  prescribe  the  reason  and 
the  method  of  its  observance.  We  have  done  well,  then, 
at  the  outset,  to  wait  with  listening  ears  and  with  obedient 
hearts  at  the  throne  and  mercy-seat  of  God,  to  hear  what 
he  will  say  ;  not  that  we  may  sit  in  judgment  upon  it,  nor 
consider  the  question  of  heeding  and  obeying,  but  only 
that  we  may  know  it  and  do  it.  If  we  are  God's  servants,, 
the  followers  of  Christ,  our  one  acknowledged  duty  is  to 
do  the  will  which  he  has  declared  to  us. 

"  Ours  not  to  reason  why  ; 
Ours  but  to  do  and  "  —  live. 

We  have  committed  ourselves  and  our  doings  here  to 
the  will  of  Him  who  by  the  right  of  righteousness  bears 
rule  over  us.  In  obedience  to  him  we  have  liberty  and 
delight.     To  the  freemen  of   the  Lord  his  statutes  are 


SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


songs.  In  asserting  his  law,  and  bidding  men  obey  it,  we 
are  filling  the  air  again  with  the  glad  sound- which  rang 
out  a  hundred  years  ago  in  the  **  portentous  text  "  written 
on  the  bell  which  declared  our  independence, —  ''Proclaim 
liberty  throughout  all  the  land,  unto  all  the  inhabitants 
thereof."  The  truest  use  of  independence  is  in  loyalty  to 
the  King  eternal.  We  cannot  now  make  all  the  land 
loyal  to  his  will  ;  but  we  can  declare  the  duty  and  honor 
of  loyalty  while  we  assert  in  many  ways  that  the  sabbath 
is  the  Lord's  day. 

This  Convention  is  worthily  called  ;  and  it  answers  its 
end  if,  while  it  fails  to  secure  this  year  or  for  many  years 
the  right  observance  of  the  sabbath,  it  makes,  in  the  name 
of  freemen  and  loyal  men,  a  declaration  that  the  sabbath 
ought  to  be  kept ;  and  that,  so  far  as  we  can  have  it  so, 
pledging  ''  our  lives,  our  fortunes,  and  our  sacred  honor," 
the  sabbath  shall  be  kept. 

It  is  a  day,  from  first  to  last,  of  gladness.  There  is  no 
minor  tone  in  the  true  idea  of  the  sabbath.  There  is  not 
a  sad,  desponding  note,  not  a  feeling  of  bondage,  not  a 
sense  of  oppression,  not  an  added  burden,  in  any  true 
thought  of  the  day  of  the  Lord.  It  is  a  day  of  liberty,  a 
day  of  gladness,  a  day  of  help.  So  is  it  in  the  beginning : 
man's  first  day  in  the  world  was  the  sabbath  day ;  he 
opened  his  eyes  which  never  had  looked  out  upon  the 
wonders  and  beauties  of  nature,  and  he  beheld  all  things 
good,  —  the  brilliant  flowers,  the  majestic  trees,  the 
spreading  fields  ;  the  song  of  the  birds  he  heard,  and  he 
breathed  the  pure  inspiriting  air.  All  was  good  to  him  ; 
and  he  saw  what  we  some  day  shall  see,  when  man's  handi- 
work is  undone,  when  our  misdoing  is  displaced  by  the 
return  of  God's  first  doing,  in  that  glad  time  when  nature 
shall  again  be  in  sympathy  with  men,  when  redemption 
shall  be  complete.  Then,  as  the  redeemed  of  the  Lord 
go  up  to  Mount  Zion  with  songs  and  everlasting  joy  upon 


SABBATH  ESSAYS. 


their  heads,  the  mountains  and  the  hills  shall  again  break 
forth  before  them  into  singing,  and  all  the  trees  of  the 
field  shall  clap  their  hands. 

This  first  thought  of  the  sabbath  was  a  thought  of 
delight.  The  other  thought  which  crowns  the  sabbath, 
which  brings  it  closer  to  men,  and  with  a  different  mean- 
ing, is  still  a  thought  of  gladness  and  hope.  The  grandest 
day,  the  gladdest  day,  man  ever  saw,  was  like  the  first  day 
man  ever  saw, — the  day  of  the  Lord.  It  may  not  have 
been  the  same  day  of  the  week ;  that  is  of  small  account : 
it  was  the  Lord's  day,  chosen  of  him  and  honored  of  him, 
when  there  came  in  that  new  creation  wrought  out  by  Him 
by  whom  all  things  were  made,  and  without  whom  nothing 
was  made  that  was  made  ;  that  new  creation,  the  new 
heaven  and  the  new  earth,  and  the  new  men,  wherein 
forevermore  dwelleth  righteousness. 

Now,  taking  these  two  thoughts  which  give  the  meaning 
to  the  sabbath  day, — first,  that  God  gave  it  to  man  at  the 
beginning  of  things,  at  the  creation  of  the  world  ;  second, 
that  he  renewed  the  gift,  and  brought  it  closer  to  man,  in 
the  reformation  of  the  world,  and  the  redemption  of  men, 
—  then  we  have  the  first  thought,  which  ought  to  be  the 
middle  thought  and  last  thought  in  all  our  consideration 
of  the  sabbath,  that  it  is  ordained. as  a  day  of  joy  and 
hope  and  triumph  for  man.  It  is  in  this  way  that  it  is 
represented  uniformly  in  the  Holy  Scriptures,  from  the 
time  of  God's  rest  when,  in  the  majesty  of  his  Deity, 
having  made  all  things,  he  paused  in  the  work  of  his  crea- 
tion, that  his  divine  heart  might  enjoy  his  glorious  and 
cunning  handiwork,  to  that  day  when  God's  word  was 
uttered  amid  the  thunders  and  the  lightnings  of  Mount 
Sinai,  telling  every  wearied  man,  that,  for  one-seventh  of 
his  time,  he  was  released  from  the  law  of  labor ;  telling 
every  servant,  that,  for  one-seventh  of  his  time,  he  need 
not  be  servant ;  telling  the  wearied  cattle  within  the  gates, 


SABBATH  ESSAYS. 


that,  for  one-seventh  of  their  time,  they  might  have  the 
benison  of  that  rest  which  God  took  to  himself  when  he 
made  the  world.  In  all  the  sovereignty,  strength,  law, 
and  justice  of  Sinai,  there  is  this  thought  of  helpfulness 
and  quietness.  It  is,  in  effect,  the  loving  father  saying  to 
his  weary  child,  the  tender  master  to  his  tired  servant,  the 
good-hearted  man  to  his  tired  cattle,  My  child,  my  servant, 
my  horse,  you  and  I,  by  God's  will,  may  rest. 

Passins:  from  that  to  the  further  declaration  of  the  sab- 
bath  day  as  read  to  us  this  morning,  we  find  still  the 
thought  of  deliverance  and  assistance.  They  who  keep  it 
are  exalted ;  those  who  revere  it  as  the  Lord's  day,  and  call 
it  honorable  in  their  lives, — what  happens  to  them.?  Not 
that  life  becomes  more  wearisome,  not  that  added  bur- 
dens are  given  to  those  already  burdened  enough,  not  that 
they  bow  down  under  the  yoke,  and  become  the  weary  foot- 
men trudging  the  dreary  and  tiresome  paths  of  the  world. 
They  who  keep  the  sabbath,  they  shall  ride,  —  poor  men, 
feeble  men,  tired  men,  they  shall  ride.  No  chariot  may 
be  theirs,  no  horses  may  be  theirs  :  they  shall  ride ;  not 
along  the  swampy  places,  not  through  the  byways  of  the 
world,  not  over  its  craggy  hills  or  through  its  barren  val- 
leys ;  they  who  keep  the  sabbath  shall  ride,  and  not  be 
weary ;  they  shall  "  ride  upon  the  high  places  of  the 
earth  ! " 

This,  brethren,  is  the  thought  of  the  sabbath  in  Holy 
Scripture,  —  rest,  relief,  gladness;  a  time  when  man,  re- 
leased from  his  common  work,  may  turn  to  his  higher 
work  and  diviner  thoughts,  and,  in  the  rest  which  God 
gives,  commune  with  Him  who  himself  rested  on  the  sab- 
bath day. 

If  we  pass  from  Holy  Scripture  to  human  history,  it  is 
quite  the  same.  History  is  the  varied  account  of  man's 
varied  deeds ;  yet  always  the  sabbath  comes  in  pleasantly. 
It  runs  along  with  the  idea  of  plenty  and  peace  and  quiet. 


SABBATH  ESSAYS. 


—  good  order,  good  laws,  good  kings,  large  harvests,  peace 
with  neighbors,  and  peace  within  the  gates.  It  is  among 
these  benefactions  of  the  best  days  of  human  history  that 
the  sabbath  has  its  place. 

If  we  turn  to  expressions  of  the  feelings  of  good  men, 

—  the  best  expressions,  more  eloquent  than  their  lives, 
more  eloquent  than  our  dull  prose,  —  if  we  take  the  songs 
which  boldly  and  without  restraint  utter  the  feelings  of 
men,  it  is  still  the  thought  of  gladness  which  rests  upon 
the  sabbath.  No  wailing  in  all  our  hymns  over  the  sab- 
bath day;  no  deploring  tone.  "Welcome,  sweet  day  of 
rest,"  "delightful  morn,"  "auspicious  morn,"  "festal 
morn."  It  is  the  earnest  of  the  everlasting  day  which  is 
to  crown  man's  highest  aspirations  :  so  have  the  poets 
sung  for  us  the  day  of  the  Lord. 

If  we  take  it  in  our  own  experience,  it  is  equally  the 
thought  of  gladness.  We  go  back  to  the  innocence  of 
our  homes,  to  the  security  of  our  boyhood,  and  recall  our 
release  from  study,  our  best  attire  brought  forth  for  the 
best  of  days,  and  the  sacred  memories,  more  delightful 
possibly  as  memories  than  in  the  reality  of  them,  of  the 
time  when  with  our  father  and  mother  we  went  up  to 
the  house  of  God,  and  sat  to  listen  to  the  word  of  God. 
May  that  man  be  pitied  who  remembers  the  childhood 
which  he  had  with  a  God-fearing  father  and  mother  in  a 
sabbath-keeping  home,  but  whose  heart  does  not  grow 
tender  and  tearful  at  the  sanctified  memory ! 

If  we  take  it  again  as  connected  more  especially  with 
the  history  of  our  own  country,  it  is  a  day  of  honor  and 
advantage.  To  my  mind,  as  I  look  over  what  our  fathers 
have  done,  there  is  no  time  which  seems  more  significant 
of  all  their  purpose  and  the  character  of  the  men  than  that 
last  sabbath  which  is  recorded  of  our  Pilsrrim  Fathers 
before  their  feet  had  trodden  the  soil  of  Plymouth.  They 
had  been  a  month  on  the  coast,  running  up  and  down  the 


SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


curving  shores  of  Cape  Cod,  if  so  be  they  might  find  the 
land  and  the  spot  of  promise.  Week  after  week  passed  by. 
At  last  one  Friday  afternoon  they  deemed  they  drew  near 
a  certain  country.  They  found  an  uncertain  country. 
Presently  their  pilot  told  them  he  did  not  know  where  they 
were.  Their  mast  was  broken  in  three  pieces  ;  their  rudder 
was  broken  ;  their  sails  were  destroyed ;  they  lay  almost 
at  the  mercy  of  the  fierce  winds,  and  the  snow  and  the 
sleet  were  driving  mercilessly  upon  them.  As  that  Fri- 
day night's  sun  went  down,  they  reached  the  unknown 
shore.  In  the  morning  they  found  they  had  come  upon 
an  island.  It  was  Saturday.  God  had  shown  them  his 
favor :  the  sun  was  shining  upon  them  ;  they  were  not  far 
from  the  shore  they  sought.  But  they  could  not  reach 
the  shore,  and  establish  themselves  there,  within  the  brief 
hours  that  remained  after  the  closing  of  the  storm  and 
before  the  dawning  of  the  Lord's  Day,  or  the  coming  of 
the  night  which  brought  in  the  Lord's  Day.  There  they 
stopped,  so  near  what  was  to  be  their  new  home,  yet,  in 
their  thought  and  by  their  piety,  so  far  from  the  land. 
Saturday  and  Sunday  they  spent  on  Clark's  Island.  It 
seems  to  me  that  the  staying  on  Clark's  Island  is  a  greater 
event  than  the  landing  on  Plymouth  Rock.  They  must 
needs  land  at  some  Plymouth  :  they  had  crossed  the  seas 
to  stay.  To  land  and  stop  there,  meant  repose  for  them, 
the  end  of  painful  wandering.  Their  declaration  of  prin- 
ciples had  been  made :  they  were  exiles  and  pilgrims,  and 
it  was  the  indulgence  of  their  fondest  desires  to  step  on 
Plymouth  Rock.  But  they  staid  on  Clark's  Island  because 
they  loved  God,  and  reverenced  his  law.  They  had  not 
come  in  that  wintry  time,  in  mid-December,  to  lose  a  day 
of  waiting  hard  by  the  place  where  they  were  to  abide. 
They  declared  more  emphatically  than  on  Plymouth  Rock 
that  they  were  here  in  the  name  and  for  the  sake  of  Him 
who  had  said,  "Remember  the   sabbath   day  to   keep  it 


SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


holy."  With  that  commandment  in  their  minds,  and  the 
habit  of  their  life  upon  them,  they  could  not,  would  not,  sail 
over  the  narrow  intervening  water,  and  build  themselves 
houses  on  Sunday,  when  they  could  endure  the  cold  and 
privation  of  the  island  upon  which  they  had  been  cast. 
That  persistence  and  that  principle,  the  lingering  there 
because  the  next  day  was  the  sabbath,  —  I  think  is  grander 
and  more  heroic  than  the  comparatively  tame  act  of  step- 
ping their  foot  upon  the  shore  they  had  crossed  the  sea  to 
find.  If  I  were  to  build  a  monument  to  the  Pilgrims,  one 
which  should  generously  represent  the  character  of  the 
men,  it  should  be  on  Clark's  Island  ;  where  now,  indeed, 
their  daring  and  piety  are  commemorated  in  the  living 
rock,  inscribed  by  hands  which  delight  to  do  them  honor. 

Brethren,  I  have  said  that  the  sabbath  is  a  day  of  glad- 
ness ;  yet  I  am  not  unaware  that  it  is  with  some  degree 
of  depression  and  misgiving,  and  because,  perhaps,  of 
misgiving  and  depression,  that  we  have  come  together. 
But,  for  every  thing  that  may  dishearten  us,  there  are 
more  things  which  may  encourage  us.  If  there  be  noth- 
ing more  than  this,  that  in  these  busy  days,  and  from  their 
places  of  work,  so  many  have  turned  aside  to  bear  the 
testimony  of  their  presence  to  the  reality  and  worth  of  the 
sabbath  day,  —  that  is  something  to  be  thankful  for.  We 
say  that  the  sabbath  is  broken.  We  mourn  that  its  holy 
hours  are  profaned.  To  what  extent  are  these  things 
true }  Are  the  stores  open  on  the  sabbath  }  No ;  save 
with  here  and  there  an  exception  too  rare  to  escape  notice. 
Schools  are  closed  on  the  sabbath.  In  few  places  is  there 
a  library  open  on  the  sabbath.  I  believe  this  Puritan  city 
is  the  only  one  in  New  England  which  has  the  distinction 
of  opening  a  museum  upon  the  Lord's  Day.  Are  our  rail- 
road-trains run  upon  the  sabbath  1  Not  as  upon  other 
days.  Men  turn  from  their  stores  and  offices.  Wander- 
ing through  the  business  part  of  Boston  or  New  York, 


8  SABBA TH  E'SSA  YS. 

you  might  almost  think  you  were  treading  the  streets  of 
Pompeii.  The  churches  everywhere  are  open,  and  the 
sabbath  bells  break  delightfully  the  silence  of  the  sab- 
bath morn  with  their  call  to  worship  and  their  testimony 
to  the  reality  and  authority  of  the  day  of  worship.  With 
too  much  to  lament  and  to  remedy,  there  is  far  more  for 
which  we  should  be  thankful.  The  day  remains,  and  holds 
its  place  of  honor.  Let  us  not  forget  the  engines  which 
are  still,  the  shuttered  windows  and  barred  doors,  the 
treasures  of  art  and  literature  which  are  deserted  for  the 
eternal  riches  of  righteousness  and  truth. 

The  light  of  the  Lord's  Day  is  spreading.  Even  now, 
upon  the  Continent  of  Europe  there  are  earnest  efforts  to 
restore  to  the  sabbath  the  sacredness  which  it  once  pos- 
sessed. "  In  Germany,  in  Switzerland,  and  in  France,"  it 
is  said,  ''there  are  already  organizations  and  thoughtful 
men  who  are  seeking  to  banish  the  Continental  Sunday." 
The  large  and  successful  efforts  to  introduce  our  Sunday 
school  among  the  children  of  the  Old  World  favor  the 
true  recognition  and  proper  observance  of  ihe  Lord's  Day. 
Tidings  have  come  from  Japan,  that  the  sacred  day  of 
that  land  is  changed  to  the  first  day  of  the  week,  the 
Lord's  Day.  To  all  this  at  a  distance  let  us  add  the 
greatly  increased  attention  given  to  the  sabbath  by  Chris- 
.tian  people  in  our  own  land,  and  the  new  efforts  to  pre- 
serve and  promote  its  sacred  observance,  and  we  have 
abundant  reason  to  take  courage  with  thankfulness,  while 
we  address  ourselves  to  the  work  to  which  now  w^e  are 
called. 

There  are  two  lines  of  thought  which  we  need  to  carry 
out  in  all  our  consideration  of  this  subject.  The  first  is 
the  thought  of  obligation.  Whether  we  like  it  or  not, 
whether  we  can  demonstrate  the  practicability  and  the  re- 
ward of  it  or  not,  men  ought  to  keep  holy  the  sabbath  day. 
Unless  I  misread  these  times,  there  is  no  thought  which 


SABBATH  ESSAYS. 


men  need  more  to  hear  and  feel,  whether  in  their  private 
lives  or  in  their  church  and  social  relations,  than  that  of 
obligation.  The  old  word  ought,  suggesting  something 
which  I  owe,  and  therefore  must  pay,  needs  to  be  enforced. 
We  have  dwelt  so  much  upon  the  blessedness  of  being 
God's  children,  upon  the  sweet  peace  and  reward  of  being 
the  followers  of  Christ,  that  I  am  afraid  we  have  lost  sight 
of  the  fact,  that,  whether  it  be  pleasant  or  not,  we  ought 
to  be  Christians ;  whether  we  can  see  the  gain  of  »it  or 
not,  we  ought  to  be  Christians.  It  is  obligation,  first : 
to  be  a  Christian  is  of  great  advantage  in  all  respects  ; 
let  us  never  fail  to  be  thankful  for  that :  but  I  think 
sometimes  that  the  very  gain  is  a  disadvantage.  It  seems 
sometimes  a  disadvantage,  that  every  thing  which  God 
wants  us  to  do,  it  is  for  our  good  and  pleasure  to  do.  I 
have  almost  wished,  that,  in  the  wide  will  of  God,  there 
might  be  something  asked  of  us  which  it  would  hurt  us 
to  do ;  that  we  might  be  asked  to  give  up  something 
which  it  would  be  better  to  keep.  We  never  are  ;  we 
never  are  asked  to  do  any  thing  when  we  should  not  gain 
by  the  doing ;  we  are  never  asked  to  go  anywhere  where 
we  shall  not  be  richer  and  better.  It  is  well :  it  marks 
the  great  kindness  and  beneficence  of  God  ;  but  it  is  a 
perilous  condition  to  be  in,  because  we  may  come  to  think 
that  the  great  intention  of  religion  is  to  make  us  happy ; 
but  it  is  not :  that  the  great  reason  why  men  should 
come  to  Jesus  is  because  they  will  have  peace ;  but  it  is 
not :  that  the  great  reason  why  men  should  turn  away 
from  their  sins  is  that  they  may  get  to  heaven ;  but  it  is 
not.  The  great  reason  why  I  should  love  God  is  because  i^ 
I  oiLgJit  to  love  God  ;  the  great  reason  why  I  should  come 
to  Christ,  the  Saviour,  is  because  I  ought  to  come  to  him ; 
the  great  reason  why  I  should  follow  him  in  loving  obedi- 
ence is  because  I  ought  to  follow  him  ;  and  the  great 
reason  why  I  should  try  to  get  to  heaven,  and  succeed  in 


10  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 


the  effort,  is  because  I  ought  to  get  to  heaven.  I  hope 
we  shall  not  dwell  simply  upon  the  advantage  of  keeping 
the  sabbath,  and  content  ourselves  with  showing  that  it  is 
better  for  the  laboring-man,  and  for  the  horse  and  the 
engine,  and  that  it  contributes  to  the  peace  and  good 
order  of  society  ;  but  that  we  shall  take  the  more  mascu- 
line thought,  and  say  we  will  keep  the  sabbath  because 
we  ought  to  keep  it.  "Thus  saith  the  Lord,  Remember 
the  sabbath  day  to  keep  it  holy." 

The  other  thought,  closely  allied  with  that  which  I  have 
already  suggested,  is  of  the  exceeding  advantage  of  keep- 
ing the  sabbath  day.  It  was  made  not  by  man,  but  for 
man  ;  made  to  help  him  ;  made  to  be  strength  for  his 
weakness,  and  light  for  his  darkness ;  made  to  give  him 
new  encouragement,  and  therefore  new  accomplishment, 
in  the  work  of  life.  When  our  Lord  found  the  day  so  op- 
pressive that  it  was  in  many  respects  a  burden  instead  of 
a  help,  he  took  off  the  burdens,  and  left  the  day.  I  won- 
der we  so  often  fail  to  see  that  our  Lord's  reformation  of 
the  sabbath  must  have  this  meaning,  that  he  would  have 
the  sabbath  preserved.  Men  say  sometimes  that  Christ 
did  away  with  it.  It  was  a  very  singular  method  of  doing 
away  with  it.  It  would  be  strange  conduct  for  a  man 
with  a  ruined  house,  to  put  it  in  repair  the  day  before  he 
pulls  it  down.  It  would  be  strange  dealing  for  a  man 
with  a  ship  which  has  outlasted  its  usefulness,  to  put  the 
sails  upon  it  the  day  before  he  would  break  it  up.  Yet 
men  say  that  our  Lord  repaired  the  sabbath,  took  off  its 
burdens,  and  restored  its  true  spirit,  the  day  before  —  nay, 
the  same  day,  that  he  sought  to  abolish  it.  When  I  hear 
our  Lord  say  that  a  man  may  upon  the  sabbath  rub  the 
barley-ears  in  his  hands  because  he  is  hungry  ;  may  do 
works  of  charity  which  can  be  done  only  upon  that  day,  — 
I  say  this  is  the  witness  that  he  who  thus  reforms  and 
restores  the  day,  restores  and  reforms  it  because  he  means 


SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS.  1 1 

to  have  it  last.  It  still  is  to  be  kept  and  enjoyed.  The 
redemption  of  the  sabbath  was  a  part  of  his  gracious  work, 
whereby  he  would  make  every  man's  life  richer,  every  soul 
stronger,  and  bring  the  spirit  which  is  man  into  more  close 
and  loving  intercourse  with  the  Spirit  who  is  God.  The 
Good  Shepherd  gave  his  life  for  the  sheep.  He  gave  gifts 
to  men.  It  is  for  our  good  to  accept  his  gifts,  and  to  obey 
his  commands.  Let  this  be  remembered  and  repeated 
while  we  are  here  and  when  we  have  gone  back  to  our 
work. 

How  shall  we  keep  the  Lord's  Day,  that  we  may  honor 
it  and  receive  its  benefit }  It  should  be  kept  in  a  manner 
appropriate  to  its  nature  and  design.  It  celebrates  the 
resurrection  of  our  Lord  and  our  Redeemer.  Evidently, 
therefore,  in  the  observance  of  the  day,  his  resurrection 
should  have  the  central  place.  It  should  be  sacred,  and  it 
should  be  delightful.  The  day  should  begin  early,  and  be 
greeted  with  holy  song.  In  its  sacred  leisure  we  should 
prolong  our  communion  with  our  Lord.  We  should  wor- 
ship him  together  in  our  homes,  and  go  up  to  his  house  in 
company.  We  should  extend  the  blessings  of  his  salva- 
tion to  those  who  have  them  not,  that  they  may  rejoice 
with  us,  that  **now  is  Christ  risen  from  the  dead."  The 
heart  which  is  absorbed  in  the  love  of  him  will  find  the 
fitting  method  to  please  him. 

Our  Puritan  fathers,  so  often  regarded  as  cold  and  stern 
men,  knew  the  joy  of  the  Lord's  Day.  Their  observance 
took  its  character  in  part,  and  very  properly,  from  the  cir- 
cumstances in  which  they  stood.  A  smoother  time  might 
have  shown  them  softer  men.  We  owe  our  liberties  to 
their  firmness  and  strength.  The  nature  of  the  men 
entered  into  the  nature  of  their  sabbath.  Yet  they  had 
their  tender  and  gentle  thoughts  towards  lovely  things ; 
and  they  came  with  devout  and  warm  hearts  to  the 
remembrance  of  the  sabbath  day. 


12  SA  BBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

That  sturdy  Puritan  Thomas  Shepard,  whose  ''ortho- 
dox and  soul-flourishing  ministry  "  was  on  the  farther  side 
of  the  Charles,  has  left  us  his  thoughts,  the  result  of  his 
elaborate  studies  upon  the  sabbath,  in  a  treatise  well  worth 
reading,  still  as  fresh  and  interesting,  perhaps,  as  any  thing 
that  English  scholarship  has  given  us  upon  the  sabbath. 
He  has  described  the  day  in  the  gentlest  and  most  affec- 
tionate terms.  Hear  him  :  "  We  are  to  abstain  from  all 
servile  work,  not  so  much  in  regard  of  the  bare  abstinence 
from  work,  but  that,  having  no  work  of  our  own  to  mind 
or  do,  we  might  be  wholly  taken  up  with  God's  work,  being 
wholly  taken  off  from  our  own  that  he  may  speak  with  us, 
and  reveal  himself  more  fully  and  familiarly  to  us  (as 
friends  do  when  they  get  alone),  having  called  and  carried 
us  out  of  the  noise  and  crowd  of  all  worldly  occasions  and 
things.  .  .  .  Upon  every  sabbath  we  should  be  in  a  holy 
manner  drowned  in  the  cares  and  thoughts  and  affections 
of  the  things  of  God.  .  .  .  Such  is  the  overflowing  and 
abundant  love  of  a  blessed  God,  that  it  will  have  some 
special  times  of  special  fellowship  and  sweetest  mutual 
embracings.  .  .  .  Herein  God's  great  love  appears  to 
weary,  sinful,  restless  man  ;  all  the  treasures  of  his  most 
rich  and  precious  love  are  set  open." 

Such  was  this  Puritan's  idea  of  the  sabbath.  It  was  a 
day  when  God  and  man  could  meet ;  when  man,  released 
from  his  usual  work,  could  have  special  leisure  to  sit  down 
with  God,  and  converse  with  him.  "■  Sweetest  mutual 
embracings,"  as  if  the  heavenly  Father  threw  his  arms 
around  his  obedient  child,  and  welcomed  him  to  hours  of 
holy  intercourse  ;  as  if  he  said,  ''  Now  rest,  my  son  ;  your 
week  is  ended,  and  its  work  all  done :  let  us  enjoy  my 
day  together,  and  talk  of  the  Christ  whom  I  gave  to  the 
world,  whom  you  have  received,  in  whose  redemption  and 
resurrection  I  and  you  rejoice." 

How  shall  the  day  be  restored  to  its  own  place  in  the 


SABBATH  ESSAYS.  13 

lives  of  men  ?  Laws  will  do  something  in  its  behalf  ;  our 
influence  in  the  community  will  do  more.  But  the  sabbath 
must  rise,  like  other  spiritual  institutions,  by  the  rise  of 
the  spiritual  thought  that  is  beneath  them.  It  is  not  very 
strange  that  the  sabbath  is  not  well  kept.  It  is  only  a 
secondary  part  in  that  great  fact  that  the  world  does  not 
care  very  much  for  Christ.  There  is  not  the  longing  of 
the  heart  to  see  him  or  to  honor  him.  You  recall  the  first 
Lord's  Day,  when  Christ  brought  in  the  new  creation  and 
the  new  commemoration.  He  came  forth  from  the  sepul- 
chre, and  it  was  his  coming  into  the  world  over  again. 
There  is  a  gentle  sadness  in  that  single  clause  of  the  Evan- 
gelist, ''There  was  no  room  for  them  in  the  inn."  We  do 
not  blame  those  who  were  before  him  at  the  inn  ;  yet  it 
always  seems  unfit  that  for  him  there  should  have  been  no 
room  in  the  inn.  There  is  a  darker  time  than  that.  He 
lived  three  and  thirty  years  in  the  world.  He  went  away 
for  three  days ;  he  said  that  he  should  return  ;  and  he  came 
back  into  a  world  that  had  nobody  to  receive  him.  Not  a 
man  of  all  the  men  he  had  blessed,  not  a  mother  of  all  the 
mothers  whose  children  he  had  cradled  in  his  arms,  met  him 
with  songs  when  he  returned.  Oh  !  it  is  sadder  than  the 
coming  to  Bethlehem  ;  and  one  of  the  saddest  things  in  all 
the  Gospel  is  that  a  few  of  those  to  whom  he  had  prom- 
ised to  return  at  last  came  to  meet  him,  not  with  their 
songs,  but  with  funeral  ointments  in  their  hands.  Why  this 
absence  }  Why  this  unfitting  welcome  .?  They  loved  him. 
They  had  not  heard,  or  they  had  not  remembered,  how  he 
spake  unto  them  when  he  was  yet  in  Galilee.  It  must  be 
in  the  remembrance  of  him  and  of  his  teaching,  that  we 
honor  and  serve  him.  To  receive  the  sabbath  from  his 
hands,  is  to  receive  it  aright.  To  keep  it  in  the  true 
remembrance  of  him,  is  to  keep  it  aright. 

It  must  be  by  the  love  of  him  that  we  come  to  love  his 
day.     It  must  be  in  the  obedience  of  him  that  we  come  to 


1 4  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


obey  that  precept  which  is  from  the  beginning  unto  the 
end,  that  the  sabbath  day  is  to  be  kept  holy,  —  here,  in  this 
one  day  out  of  the  seven ;  there,  in  that  day  which  is  seven 
days  out  of  the  seven,  the  day  which  never  wanes  to  night, 
where  every  heart  is  consecrated  to  the  living  Christ,  who 
died  and  rose  again. 


SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS.  1 5 


THE   SACREDNESS   OF  THE   SABBATH,   ESSENTIAL 
AND   ETERNAL.^ 

BY   REV.    JOSEPH  T.    DURYEA,    D.D.,  OF   BOSTON. 

My  own  view  of  the  sacredness  of  the  sabbath  rests 
back  upon  what  was  essential  and  eternal  in  the  primitive 
precept.  God  does  not  arbitrarily  ordain  and  enact.  He 
is  always  at  one  with  himself :  whatever  he  does  receives 
into  it  his  intelligence,  his  love,  and  his  righteousness.  If 
he  has  ever  done  any  thing,  it  was  because  he  saw  a  worthy 
end,  and  devised  appropriate  means  of  accomplishing  the 
end  ;  and  both  the  end  and  the  means  were  consonant 
with  love  and  justice.  Whenever  the  time  comes  that  the 
end  shall  cease  to  be  desirable,  and  the  means  suitable, 
then  the  ordinance  may  be  revoked,  the  institution  may 
come  to  its  term.  These  remarks  are  pointed  toward  the 
common  notion  in  some  minds,  that  the  law  of  the  sabbath 
has  been  revoked.     I  simply  ask,  Why } 

This  brings  us  back  to  the  primitive  promulgation  of 
the  statute.  God  commanded  that  men  should  rest  on 
the  seventh  day  from  their  labors  ;  but  why  }  In  the  first 
place,  because  they  needed  rest ;  and,  in  the  next  place, 
rest  would  afford  leisure  for  occupation  not  inconsistent 
with  rest.  We  have  found  from  an  observance  of  this 
day  a  physical  benefit :  where  it  has  not  been  observed, 
we  have  discovered  a  physical  injury.  We  have  gained 
by  the  observance  of  this  day  a  sphere  and  opportunity 
for  the  life  of  the  soul  :  where  it  has  not  been  observed, 

1  This  address  really  preceded  the  previous  address,  as  it  was  delivered  in  connec- 
tion with  the  preliminary  prayer  and  Bible-reading  led  by  Dr.  Duryea,  which  occupied 
the  early  hour  before  the  organization  of  the  conventions. 


\^ 


1 6  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

we  have  found  there  has  been  a  dwarfing  and  corruption 
of  the  Hfe  of  the  soul.  God  therefore  instituted  the  sab- 
bath at  the  beginning  because  it  was  needful  for  man.  In 
meeting  that  need  he  demonstrated  his  love ;  in  laying 
down  the  rule  which  sets  forth  the  means  by  which  the 
need  may  be  met  and  fulfilled,  he  has  manifested  his  right- 
eousness. Does  the  need  no  longer  exist  1  Is  not  the 
rest  needful  to  the  body  yet }  Is  not  the  opportunity 
needful  to  the  soul  still  1  If,  then,  the  ends  are  still  to  be 
gained,  and  the  means  are  suitable  to  the  ends,  the  statute 
holds  by  virtue  of  the  essential  and  eternal  in  its  pro- 
priety. God  does  not  wilfully  enact  laws :  he  declares 
that  to  be  good  which  he  first  sees  to  be  good  ;  he  declares 
that  to  be  right  which  he  first  perceives  to  be  right.  Not 
even  the  will  of  God  is  the  fountain  of  authority,  but  the 
nature  of  God,  by  means  of  which  spontaneously  God's 
will  is  as  it  is.  It  is  his  nature  to  love  ;  and  he  will  seek 
the  best  for  his  creatures,  and  in  his  ordaining  wisdom  he 
will  give  the  rule  that  goes  straight  to  the  end ;  and  that 
is  right,  and  the  spirit  that  accepts  and  obeys  it  is  right- 
eous. 

Now  the  argument  comes  rolling  up  like  the  surges  of 
the  sea,  and  thunders  a  fortiori.  If  Adam  and  Eve  in  the 
garden,  without  necessity  of  toil,  without  raiment  to  be 
wrought,  or  food  to  be  prepared,  or  work  to  be  done  for 
others,  under  a  genial  clime  exposing  their  flesh  to  the 
sun  and  the  air,  lying  down  under  the  trees  of  the  garden, 
and  opening  their  mouths  to  catch  the  falling  fruit,  needed 
to  rest,  surely  the  men  of  this  age  need  to  rest.  And  if 
they  whose  days  were  all  sabbath  days  needed  to  take  one 
that  should  be  a  sabbatism  in  the  midst  of  an  unending 
sabbath,  surely  we,  who  get  not  even  a  little  hurried  sab- 
bath each  morning  after  breakfast  for  short  reading  and 
for  prayers,  need  one  day  wholly  set  apart  and  consecrated 
for  the  rest  of  the  body  and  the  restful  activity  of  the  soul. 


SABBATH  ESSAYS.  1 7 

Do  these  men  tell  us  that  we  are  no  longer  tired  at  the 
end  of  the  sixth  day  ?  Do  these  men  tell  us  that  we  have 
lived  the  life  divine  so  perfectly  through  all  the  hours  of 
the  six  days,  that  we  do  not  need  to  come  to  a  pause,  and 
have  special  time  for  the  development  and  exercise  of  this 
life  God-ward  and  man-ward  ?  Certainly  not.  The  ques- 
tion then  comes  back,  Why  did  God  institute  the  sabbath 
at  the  first  ?  Are  the  grounds  on  which  his  wisdom  raised 
its  foundations  undermined  and  displaced  ?  Because  he 
did  it  once,  and  the  reason  still  abides  for  the  doing  of  it, 
there  cannot  have  been  an  abrogation.  It  is  true,  we  need 
to  go  back  to  the  terms  of  the  law,  and  see  precisely  what 
he  did  ordain,  —  namely,  that  men  should  rest.  He  knew 
very  well,  however,  that  the  mind  cannot  come  to  a  pause ; 
that  it  must  be  active,  and  that  the  rest  of  the  body  should 
be  simply  an  opportunity  for  a  new  form  of  mental  exer- 
cise ;  that  thoughts  would  come  of  themselves,  if  men  did 
not  seek  them  ;  and,  having  provided  the  Truth  to  enlight- 
en us  and  the  Spirit  to  inspire  us  in  all  our  judgments, 
he  left  to  us  spontaneously  to  develop  that  form  of  action 
that,  on  the  one  hand,  would  be  in  harmony  with  our  rest, 
and,  on  the  other,  in  agreement  with  his  boundless  and 
ceaseless  activity  of  whom  Jesus  said,  "  My  Father  work- 
eth  hitherto,  and  I  work." 

In  coming  before  the  world,  therefore,  we  lay  down  the 
authority  of  the  statute  as  pressing  men  to  the  obligation 
of  resting  :  we  leave  to  the  conscience  and  heart  of  the 
individual  the  form  of  activity  which  he  will  substitute  for 
the  common  activities  of  life.  We  do  not  propose  to  pre- 
scribe to  him  that  he  shall  do  what  we  do ;  for  we  do  not 
enact  hypocrisy,  neither  does  God.  It  is  marvellous  that 
not  one  word  is  ever  said  concerning  the  manner  in  which 
Jesus  kept  the  sabbath  day.  It  is  true,  now  and  then  we 
get  a  glimpse  of  him  in  the  temple,  and  once  in  a  while 
in  the  synagogue ;  but  during  all  those  three  long  years, 


1 8  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

and  those  months  of  his  passion,  how  did  he  observe  the 
sabbath  ?  The  Evangelists  are  silent.  God  in  his  wisdom 
has  pressed  authority  upon  us,  and  put  us  under  the  stress 
of  obligation  just  where  he  knows  we  can  obey  the  letter 
without  the  sacrifice  of  the  spirit.  Whenever  his  law 
goes  deep  enough  to  touch  the  spirit,  he  leaves  us  to  the 
work  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  the  spontaneousness  of  the 
spiritual  life  within  us. 

A  great  many  superstitions  have  grown  up  amongst  us, 
and  a  great  many  fallacies  run  in  many  minds  because  we 
have  not  discriminated  here.  It  is  supposed  by  many  that 
we  must  keep  the  sabbath  by  going  to  church,  that  there 
must  be  a  certain  number  of  services  in  certain  forms,  and 
that,  if  these  shall  ever  cease,  there  will  be  a  breaking  of 
the  sabbath. 

The  secular  newspapers,  which  understand  well  how  to 
instruct  us  in  our  duties,  tell  us  whenever  they  see  a  closed 
church  in  the  summer,  whenever  they  discover  a  silent 
pulpit,  whenever  they  learn  of  the  absence  of  a  minister, 
that  the  sabbath  has  ceased.  Has  Christ  told  us  to  wor- 
ship, and  worship  only,  in  that  house  made  with  hands } 
Has  Christ  taught  us  to  preach  in  such  a  place  and  on 
such  a  structure  as  this  on  which  I  stand,  in  carrying  out 
the  great  commission,  "  Go  ye  into  all  the  world,  and 
preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature "  }  By  no  means. 
Rather,  the  house  we  erect  is  simply  a  school  in  which 
we  prepare  for  the  constant  worship  of  the  soul  under  the 
ever-abiding  presence  of  Him  who  seeketh  worshippers  to 
worship  him  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  Teaching  in  this  place 
is  simply  the  fulfilment  of  that  paideutic  office  which  is 
to  make  others  competent  to  go  forth,  and,  in  social  con- 
verse and  close  fellowship,  teach  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus. 
We  have  narrowed  the  sphere  of  our  Christian  life,  and  we 
have  limited  the  power  of  the  Christian  institute  of  preach- 
ing, by  supposing  that  we  must  build  a  house,  erect  a  throne 


SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS.  IQ 

for  a  man,  ring  a  bell,  and  throw  the  responsibility  upon 
the  world  to  come  to  him  and  get  the  gospel  of  the  grace 
of  God.  The  commission  is,  "  Go,  and,  as  ye  go,  preach," 
—  preach  not  to  assemblies  that  come  to  get  the  gospel, 
but  ring  the  gospel  in  willing  or  unwilling  ears  until  every 
creature  on  the  globe  shall  hear  and  enjoy  the  sound. 
And  so  very  much  of  the  criticism  of  those  who  judge  us 
falls  short,  and  very  much  of  their  estimate  of  the  power 
of  Christianity  is  entirely  too  low,  for  it  is  from  the  rever- 
beration of  the  continuous  echo  of  the  gospel  that  you  are 
to  know  how  far  the  gospel  goes.  And,  when  you  tell  me 
that  we  have  not  preached  the  gospel  to  every  creature  in 
this  land,  I  tell  you  that  you  are  not  free  from  the  inspira- 
tion of  him  who  is  called  the  **  father  of  lies." 

There  is  not  a  man,  woman,  or  child,  on  this  continent, 
that  does  not  know  Christmas  Day  and  the  meaning  of  it. 
Yea,  in  great  portions  of  this  land,  there  is  not  a  man, 
woman,  or  child,  who  does  not  know  Good  Friday  and 
what  it  means.  The  incarnation  and  the  crucifixion  stand 
out  from  the  firmament  of  modern  thought  like  the  sun  in 
the  daytime  and  the  moon  in  the  night,  and  only  the  wil- 
fully blind  can  fail  to  see  it.  Yea,  I  believe  there  is  truth 
enough  in  the  darkest  mind,  in  even  these  great  cities 
which  are  surrendered  to  heathenism,  if  the  Spirit  only 
will  give  it  light  and  power,  to  quicken  in  men  a  saving 
faith  and  living  love  in  God  our  Saviour. 

So  then,  on  the  one  hand,  holding  to  the  spirit  and 
shearing  down  to  the  letter  as  close  as  we  may  in  order 
not  to  engender  hypocrisy,  let  us  stand  firm  for  the  sab- 
bath. It  seems  to  me,  that,  as  I  remember  my  childhood 
days,  the  sabbath  was  the  brightest  and  the  sweetest,  and 
of  all  the  times  most  sacred.  The  sun  rose  with  purer 
light,  the  atmosphere  breathed  more  gently,  flowers  showed 
their  colors  more  brightly,  and  odors  in  the  air  were 
sweeter.     It  seemed  as  if  the  earth  with  man  did  feel  the 


20  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

breath  of  God's  love,  and  for  a  little  while  was  wooed  from 
sin  and  drawn  to  peace.  I  have  stood  on  the  wharf  when 
the  steamboat  came  back  on  Sunday  night,  and  have  seen 
tired  and  sweltering  mothers,  irritated  and  intoxicated 
men,  and  little  children  dragged  by  the  arm  across  the 
pavement ;  and  I  have  said,  "  Is  this  the  infidel's  way  of 
giving  rest,  communion  with  nature,  and  spontaneous  re- 
ligiousness, to  the  people  ?  Give  me  the  sabbath  of  my 
father,  my  mother,  my  good  old  pastor,  and  my  sabbath- 
school  teacher!  Let  me  go  hushed  from  the  house  of 
God,  with  the  music  ringing  in  my  soul  and  the  benedic- 
tion warm  upon  my  heart,  to  the  pillow  where  in  holy 
restfulness  and  peace  I  say,  — 

*  Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep, 
I  pray  thee,  Lord,  my  soul  to  keep.' " 


ESSAYS 


I. 
Rationale  of  the  Sabbath. 


FIRST: 
THE    SABBATH    IN    NATURE. 


THE   NATURAL  LAW  OF  WEEKLY  REST. 

BY   REV.    W.    W.    ATTERBURY,    SECRETARY   OF   THE   NEW-YORK   SABBATH 

COMMITTEE. 

Is  there  a  natural  law  of  weekly  rest  ?  and,  if  so,  what 
are  its  bearings  upon  other  points  of  the  Sunday  question  } 

It  is  not  proposed  in  this  brief  paper  to  attempt  to 
collate  all  the  facts  at  hand,  but  to  indicate  their  general 
character  and  the  conclusions  to  which  they  seem  fairly 
to  point. 

I.  Is  there  a  natural  law  of  weekly  rest  ? 

I.  The  very  fact  of  the  wide-spread  and  long-contin- 
ued observance  of  a  weekly  rest-day  supplies  presumptive 
evidence,  to  say  the  least,  in  favor  of  a  law  of  our  nature 
underlying  this  observance.  No  principle  is  better  under- 
stood in  historical  investigations  than  this,  —  that  the 
institutions  of  a  people  are  not  imposed  upon  them  sud- 
denly and  by  outward  force,  but  are  the  natural  outgrowth 
of  the  character  and  conditions  of  that  people.  Institu- 
tions which  are  common  to  several  peoples  or  nations 
grow  out  of  characters  and  conditions  common  to  them 
all.  The  more  widely  and  persistently  any  institution 
prevails,  the  stronger  is  the  presumption  that  it  grows  out 

25 


26  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

of  and  expresses  some  want  of  our  common  ^humanity ; 
in  other  words,  that  it  embodies  a  natural  law. 

Now,  the  weekly  rest-day  is  emphatically  such  an  insti- 
tution as  could  not  have  been  widely  imposed  and  long 
maintained  by  mere  outward  force  or  arbitrary  law.  It 
involves  so  costly  and  constant  a  sacrifice,  so  abrupt  and 
complete  an  interruption  of  the  ordinary  habits  of  life, 
that,  if  thus  arbitrarily  imposed,  it  could  not  have  main- 
tained its  place  against  the  currents  of  every-day  life, 
against  the  pressure  of  those  wants  and  desires  the  grati- 
fication of  which  it  suspends  for  so  large  a  proportion  of 
time. 

But  such  an  institution  has  existed  from  the  earliest 
history  of  our  race.  From  time  whereof  the  memory  of 
man,  and  history  and  mythology,  run  not  to  the  contrary, 
the  division  of  time  into  the  week  of  seven  days  has  been 
the  almost  universal  law.  It  prevailed  among  peoples  far 
removed  from  each  other,  and  remote  as  well  as  near  to 
the  Asiatic  centre  whence  the  nations  of  men  radiated ; 
among  Persians,  Chaldaeans,  Egyptians,  Hindoos,  the  an- 
cient Chinese  on  the  farthermost  east,  and  the  Scandina- 
vians on  the  north-west.  In  most  of  these  instances,  it  is 
certain  that  the  week  revolved  upon  a  day  of  rest ;  and  as 
religious  rest-days,  dies  feriati,  are  found  all  through  his- 
tory marking  the  divisions  of  the  year,  it  is  altogether 
probable,  that,  wherever  the  division  by  weeks  existed,  it 
was  marked  originally  by  the  observance  of  rest-days.^ 

1  The  Chaldaean  cuneiform  inscriptions  prove  that  the  weekly  sabbath  was  observed 
not  only  by  the  Assyrians  and  Babylonians,  but  by  the  earlier  primitive  inhabitants  of 
Chaldsea  (at  and  before  the  times  of  Terah  and  Abraham),  and  was  believed  to  have 
been  ordained  at  the  creation.  (  Transactions  of  Soc.  of  Bib.  Archcsology,  vol.  v.,  p. 
427  sq.;  Academy,  vol.  vi.,  p.  554;  Sayce,  Babylonian  Literature,  p.  55,  &c.) 

Wilkinson  {Manners  and  Ctistoms  of  A?icient  Egyptians)  shows  that  the  week  of 
seven  days  existed  in  the  earliest  times  in  Egypt,  though  afterwards  superseded  by  the 
decade. 

Professor  Ernst  Curtius,  the  eminent  German  Hellenist,  says,  "The  alternation  of 
•working  and  resting  days  appeared,  even  to  the  ancients,  as  something  so  primeval  in 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  27 


Be  this  as  it  may,  the  weekly  rest-day  has  held  its  place, 
not  only  among  the  Jews  through  the  long  ages  of  their 
checkered  history,  but,  for  many  centuries  past,  among  ex- 
isting nations.  Christian  and  Mohammedan.  And  just  as 
nations  have  advanced  in  civilization  from  barbarism,  as 
men  have  come  to  know  themselves  and  their  wants  better, 
the  institution  has  taken  stronger  root.  The  most  signifi- 
cant step  onward  in  the  march  of  civilization,  known  to 
modern  history,  that  of  Japan,  was  marked  by  her  public 
and  formal  adoption  of  the  weekly  rest-day. 

Do  not  these  facts  point  with  a  strong  presumption  to 
a  fundamental  law  of  human  nature  of  which  this  observ- 
ance is  an  expression  }  ^ 

2.  We  come  to  the  direct  proof  of  the  natural  law  of 
weekly  rest. 

This  presents  itself  in  the  form,  first,  of  what  may  be 
called  empirical  testimony,  —  the  facts  of  experience  and 
observation  on  the  part  of  those  who  are  not  scientific,  — 
and  then,  of  the  more  strictly  scientific  evidence,  the  facts 
and  generalizations  of  professional  physiologists  who  have 
made  the  matter  a  special  study. 

Testimony  of  both  kinds  has  accumulated  surprisingly 
within  a  few  years  past. 

Laboring  men  of  all  classes,  men  who  control  large 
industries,  philanthropists,  political  economists,  concur  in 
attesting  the  fact,  that,  as  a  rule,  the  nightly  rest  does  not 
entirely  restore  the  energies  expended  in  ordinary  daily 
labor,  —  that  a  supplementary  rest  is  needed  of  about  one 
day  in  seven,  to  maintain   men  in    the    state   of    highest 

its  origin,  so  indispensable,  and  so  closely  connected  with  religion,  that  they  perceived 
in  it,  not  an  innovation  of  human  cleverness,  but  a  divine  ordinance :  as  Plato  says, 
'  Out  of  pity  for  the  wretched  life  of  mortals,  the  Deity  had  arranged  days  of  festal  / 
recreation  and  refreshment.'  "  {Alterthum  und  Gegenwart,  Berlin,  1875,  P-  M^-)  ' 
1  "  Antiquity  has  bequeathed  the  sabbath  to  modern  nations  ;  and  the  fact  that  this 
institution  has  subsisted  in  spite  of  the  changes  which  have  taken  place  in  the  domain 
of  politics  and  religion,  testifies  to  its  intrinsic  value,  and  to  its  absolute  necessity."  — 
Haegler,  Der  Sonntag^  vom  Stand^unkte  der  Gesundheitspflege^  &c. 


2S  SABBAT//  ESSAYS. 

efficiency.  Men  are  found,  in  the  long-run,  to  accomplish 
more  by  working  six  days  and  resting  one  day  in  the 
week,  than  by  working  without  such  rest.  The  same  is 
found  to  be  true  of  animals,  when  working  under  the  con- 
trol of  man,  and  not  moving  and  resting  according  to  the 
promptings  of  instinct  as  in  their  natural  state.  It  is 
worthy  of  remark,  that  this  testimony  is  given  most  ex- 
plicitly by  many  who  deny  the  religious  obligation  and 
uses  of  the  sabbath,  or  who  look  at  the  matter  wholly  on 
its  physical  and  secular  side.  Take,  for  instance,  the  very 
striking  testimony  of  the  radical  atheist,  yet  acute  philoso- 
pher, Pierre  Proudhon,  in  the  elaborate  essay  in  which  he 
sets  forth  the  hygienic  as  well  as  the  political,  domestic, 
and  moral  ends  of  the  Mosaic  sabbath,  and  seeks  to  show 
its  accordance  with  the  fundamental  principles  of  man 
and  society.  Take  such  testimony  as  that  of  the  eminent 
French  political  economist,  Michel  Chevalier,  when  he 
says,  "  Let  us  observe  Sunday  in  the  name  of  hygiene,  if 
not  in  the  name  of  religion." 

A  few  years  since,  the  locomotive  engineers  of  the  New- 
York  Central  and  Hudson  River  Railways,  in  a  petition 
asking  to  be  relieved  from  Sunday  labor,  said,  — 

"  This  never-ending  toil  ruins  our  health,  and  prematurely  makes 
us  feel  worn  out,  like  old  men.  Give  us  the  sabbath  for  rest  after  our 
week  of  laborious  duties,  and  we  pledge  you  that,  with  a  system  in- 
vigorated by  a  season  of  repose,  with  a  brain  eased  and  cleared  by 
hours  of  relaxation,  we  can  go  to  work  with  more  energy,  more  mental 
and  physical  force,  and  can  and  will  accomplish  more  work,  and  do  it 
better,  if  possible,  in  six  days  than  we  can  now  do  in  seven."  ^ 

As  to  the  proportion  of  rest  to  labor  which  is  fixed  by 
this  law  of  nature,  William  von  Humboldt  confirms  his 
own  testimony  by  his  personal  observation  of  the  results 

1  Numerous  testimonies  to  the  same  effect  are  given  in  the  documents  of  the  New 
York  Sabbath  Committee ;  the  opinions  of  many  prominent  railway-managers  of  this 
country  are  cited  in  Doc.  35,  Sunday  Railroad  Work. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  29 


of  the  experiment  in  France,  at  the  close  of  the  last  cen- 
tury.    He  says,  — 

.  .  .  "  However  it  may  seem  to  lie,  and  in  one  respect  really  may 
lie,  within  the  power  of  the  will  to  shorten  or  lengthen  the  usual  period 
of  labor,  still  I  am  satisfied  that  the  six  days  are  the  really  true,  fit, 
and  adequate  measure  of  time  for  work,  whether  as  respects  the 
physical  strength  of  man,  or  his  perseverance  in  a  uniform  occupa- 
pation.  There  is  also  something  human  in  the  arrangement  by  which 
those  animals  which  assist  man  in  his  work  enjoy  rest  along  with  him. 
To  lengthen  beyond  the  proper  measure  the  periods  of  returning 
repose,  would  be  as  inhuman  as  it  would  be  foolish.  An  example  of 
this  occurred  within  my  own  experience.  When  I  was  in  Paris  dur- 
ing the^  time  of  the  Revolution,  it  happened,  that,  without  regard  to 
the  divine  institution,  this  appointment  was  made  to  give  way  to  the 
dry,  wretched  decimal  system.  Every  tenth  day  was  directed  to  be 
observed  as  the  Sunday,  and  all  ordinary  business  went  on  for  nine 
days  in  succession.  When  it  became  distinctly  evident  that  this  was 
far  too  much,  many  kept  holiday  on  the  Sunday  also,  as  far  as  the 
police-laws  allowed ;  and  so  arose,  on  the  other  hand,  too  much  leisure. 
In  this  way  one  always  oscillates  between  the  two  extremes,  so  soon 
as  one  leaves  the  regular  and  ordained  middle  path."  .  .  .—Letters, 
&c.,  vol.  i.,  p.  207. 

There  is  next  a  rapidly  accumulating  mass  of  evidence 
from  what  may  be  regarded  as  higher  sources,  —  the 
declarations  of  medical  men  and  physiologists. 

Such  is  the  well-known  testimony  of  Dr.  John  Richard 
Farre,  in  1832,  before  a  committee  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, composed  of  Sir  Andrew  Agnew,  Mr.  Fowell  Buxton, 
Sir  Robert  Peel,  Lord  Morpeth,  Sir  Thomas  Baring,  &c.  :  — 

..."  As  a  day  of  rest,  I  view  it  as  a  day  of  compensation  for  the 
inadequate  restorative  power  of  the  body  nnder  continued  Idihor  2ind 
excitement.  .  .  .  But,  although  the  night  apparently  equalizes  the  cir- 
culation well,  yet  it  does  not  sufficiently  restore  its  balance  for  the 
attainment  of  a  lo7tg  life.  ...  I  consider,  therefore,  that,  in  the  bounti- 
ful provision  of  Providence  for  the  preservation  of  human  life,  the 
sabbatical  appointment  is  not,  as  it  has  been  sometimes  theologically 
viewed,  simply  a  precept  partaking  of  the  nature  of  a  political  institu- 
tion, but  that  it  is  to  be  numbered  amongst  the  natural  duties,  if  the 


30  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

preservation  of  life  be  admitted  to  be  a  duty,  and  the  premature 
destruction  of  it  a  suicidal  act.  This  is  said  simply  as  a  physician, 
and  without  reference  at  all  to  the  theological  question."  .  .  . 

In  1853  a  petition  was  presented  to  the  British  Par- 
liament, signed  by  six  hundred  and  forty-one  medical  men 
of  London,  which  contained  the  following :  *'  Your  peti- 
tioners, from  their  acquaintance  with  the  laboring  classes, 
and  with  the  laws  which  regulate  the  human  economy,  are 
convinced  that  a  seventh  day  of  rest,  instituted  by  God, 
and  coeval  with  the  existence  of  man,  is  essential  to  the 
bodily  health  and  mental  vigor  of  men  in  every  station  in 
life." 

Similar  testimony  has  been  given  by  numerous  eminent 
physicians,  medical  societies,  and  other  experts,  within  a 
few  years  past,  in  terms  not  unfrequently  as  explicit  as 
the  statement  of  Dr.  Willard  Parker  of  New  York  :  *'  The 
sabbath  must  be  observed  as  a  day  of  rest.  This  I  do  not 
state  as  an  opinion,  but  knowing  that  it  has  its  foundation 
upon  a  law  in  man's  nature  as  fixed  as  that  he  must  take 
food,  or  die." 

There  is  also  evidence  of  a  more  purely  scientific  char- 
acter. Stimulated  by  the  interest  which  the  Sunday  ques- 
tion has  awakened  recently  in  Europe,  quite  a  number  of 
physiologists  have  made  the  relations  of  work  and  rest  to 
hygiene  a  subject  of  special  study.  By  a  careful  analysis 
of  the  chief  organs  and  functions  of  man,  and  the  effects 
upon  them  of  exercise  and  rest,  variously  proportioned  in 
men  of  different  avocations,  the  evidence  is  reached  of  a 
natural  law  of  weekly  rest.  The  lines  of  investigation 
and  illustration  pursued  by  these  writers  differ  somewhat, 
but  the  conclusions  arrived  at  are  identical. 

Ochsenbein  {Die  Heiligimg  des  Sonntags  in  hygienischer 
Hinsichty  von  General  Ulrich  Ochsenbein,  Nidau,  1876) 
finds  the  physiological  value  of  the  Sunday  rest  in  the 
restoration  of  the  equilibrium  of  the  various  elements  of 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  31 


the  body  destroyed  by  weekly  labor,  and  the  recovery 
of  the  elasticity  of  nervous  and  muscular  force  lost  in 
the  same  way.  This  can  be  most  perfectly  secured  by 
the  most  nearly  perfect  rest  of  body,  mind,  and  spirit,  the 
emotions,  passions,  &c.  By  means  of  rest  we  supply  a 
deficiency  of  oxygen,  and  by  means  of  albuminous  food 
supply  a  loss  of  flesh  and  fat,  and  thus  at  the  same  time 
restore  the  power  of  tension  {Spannkraft)  of  the  muscles. 
Laborers,  who  with  hard  labor  join  a  poor  diet  deficient  in 
nitrogen,  instinctively  crave  on  Sundays  better  food,  and 
choose  a  piece  of  meat,  or  other  food  containing  nitrogen. 
Various  tables  are  presented  showing  the  result  of  experi- 
ments with  men  under  different  circumstances  of  labor, 
rest,  and  food,  confirming  his  views.  The  physiological 
effects  of  a  neglect  of  the  Sunday  rest  are  a  general  emacia- 
tion of  body,  loss  of  nervous  and  muscular  elasticity,  the 
retardation  of  the  various  vegetative  functions  of  the  sys- 
tem, and  a  general  discomfort ;  the  chyle  loses  its  due  pro- 
portion of  fluid  and  solid  constituents,  while  on  the  whole 
the  fibrous  tissues  increase,  and  the  adipose  and  mineral 
elements  (e.g.,  lime  in  the  bone)  diminish  ;  the  blood  be- 
comes more  watery,  the  pulse  slower  and  weaker,  the 
secretions  impeded,  and  digestion  and  other  processes  im- 
paired ;  and  the  system  is  predisposed  to  disease,  and  an 
easy  prey  to  epidemics. 

The  author  holds  that  the  frequency  of  the  periodic  rest 
is  not  precisely  determinable  on  purely  physiological  and 
hygienic  grounds.  The  precise  seventh-day  proportion  he 
would  rest  on  historical,  social,  economical,  as  well  as 
religious  grounds.  To  the  objection  that  the  Chinese  and 
Japanese,  comprising  so  large  a  part  of  the  human  family, 
are  very  industrious,  yet  have  no  regularly  recurring  rest- 
day,  he  replies,  that  the  Sunday  rest  has  become  by  so 
long  observance  a  second  nature  to  the  more  highly  civil- 
ized and  more  finely  organized  western  nations,  an.d  that 


32  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

the  former  have  numerous  holidays  by  which  the  need  of 
bodily  rest  is  in  a  measure  met. 

Another  treatise  which  discusses  the  question  also  from 
a  purely  scientific  standpoint  is  by  Dr.  Paul  Niemeyer, 
professor  of  hygiene  in  the  University  of  Leipsic  {Le 
Repos  Dominical,  au  point  de  vue  hygi^nique,  Paris,  1876). 
In  his  introduction  he  says,  *'  If  the  author  of  this  work 
does  not  deceive  himself,  he  has  exhibited  for  the  first 
time  the  medical  reasons  which  demonstrate  the  necessity 
of  the  Sunday  rest  in  a  manner  as  certain  as  other  reasons 
demonstrate  the  necessity  of  disinfection  in  case  of  an 
epidemic,  or  vaccination  in  case  of  smallpox." 

It  is  impossible  to  give,  in  the  brief  space  at  our  com- 
mand, any  satisfactory  summary  of  this  interesting  dis- 
cussion of  Niemeyer's.  He  makes  a  careful  and  minute 
analysis  of  the  organic  movement  of  the  human  body  and 
its  various  effects,  and  the  compensating  and  restorative 
effects  of  rest  and  change,  the  sum  total  of  which  he 
describes  as  the  restoration  of  the  natural  elasticity,  physi- 
cal and  moral.^  In  respect  to  the  proportion  of  rest  to 
labor,  he  refers  to  the  Mosaic  legislation,  and  to  the  sig- 
nificance which  Pythagoras  attached  to  the  number  seven 
in  the  human  functions.  He  goes  on  to  say  that  "  a  medi- 
cal philosopher,  Cabanis,  has  established  theoretically  a 
like  significance  for  medical  tests ;  and  modern  medicine 
;has  found  by  very  exact  methods  that  the  fluctuations  of 
the  heat  of  the  body,  that  criterion  of  good  or  bad  health, 
move  in  a  cycle  of  seven  days.  Proudhon  himself,  who 
practised   neither  religion   nor  medicine,  arrived   at   the 

1  A  curious  and  interesting  analogy  is  found  in  a  law  of  fatigue  and  refreshment 
in  iron  and  other  metals,  as  announced  by  Professor  Egleston  of  the  Columbia  College 
School  of  Mines,  New  York,  at  a  late  meeting  of  the  American  Institute  of  Mining 
Engineers  at  Montreal,  His  investigations  show,  as  he  claims,  that  iron,  &c.,  sub- 
jected to  force  or  heat  (as  in  machinery,  railways,  &c.),  undergoes  a  change  of  deterio- 
ration, from  which  it  recovers  by  rest.  He  does  not  affirm  any  ascertained  proportion 
,  between  the  amounts  or  periods  of  service  and  recovery. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  33 

same  result,  when  he  said,  *  Shorten  the  week  by  a  single 
day,  and  the  labor  bears  too  small  a  proportion  to  the 
rest ;  lengthen  the  week  to  the  same  extent,  and  labor 
becomes  excessive.  Establish  every  three  days  a  half-day 
of  rest,  and  you  increase  by  a  fraction  the  loss  of  time, 
while  in  severing  the  natural  unity  of  the  day  you  break 
the  numerical  harmony  of  things.  Accord,  on  the  other 
hand,  forty-eight  hours  of  rest  after  twelve  consecutive 
days  of  toil,  you  kill  the  man  with  inertia  after  having  ex- 
hausted him  with  fatigue.'  "  Niemeyer  then  shows  that  his 
own  investigations  lead  him  to  the  same  proportion.  He 
sums  up  his  argument  by  saying,  "  If  religion  calls  the 
seventh  day  ^the  day  of  the  Lord,'  the  hygienist,  for  the 
reasons  I  have  exhibited,  will  call  Sunday  *  the  day  of  man.'  " 
Dr.  Haegler  of  Bale  {Der  Sonntag,  voni  Stajidpicnkte  der 
GesundJieitspflege^  etc.)  follows  a  somewhat  similar  course 
of  argument  and  illustration,  and  shows  how  the  conditions 
of  our  modern  civilization  make  this  law  of  weekly  rest 
the  more  imperious.  Noting  the  intimate  relation  of  the 
soul  and  the  body,  he  emphasizes  the  importance  to  the 
bodily  health  of  the  normal  development  of  the  sensibility, 
the  imagination,  the  will ;  on  which  development  the  Sun- 
day rest  exerts  a  marked  effect.  He  uses  with  effect  the 
evidence  of  this  law  which  the  superior  vitality  of  the 
Jewish  race  furnishes.^  By  the  following  simple  diagram 
he  exhibits  the  expenditure  and  partial  recovery  of  the 
forces  in  the   ordinary  daily  labor  and  nightly  rest,  and 

1  Richardson  in  his  work,  Diseases  of  Modern  Life,  gives  data  which  prove  con- 
clusively the  remarkable  superior  vitality  of  the  Jews.  He  says  that,  "from  some 
cause  or  causes,  this  race  presents  an  endurance  against  disease  that  does  not  belong 
to  other  portions  of  the  civilized  communities  among  whom  its  members  dwell."  The 
average  life  of  the  Jews,  according  to  the  German  statistics  cited  by  him,  is  eight  or 
ten  years  longer  than  that  of  their  non-Jewish  neighbors.  Richardson  ascribes  this  to 
the  greater  "soberness  of  life,"  the  better  physical  conditions  of  the  Jews;  but  the 
physical  condition  of  the  Jews  is  not  in  any  such  proportion  superior  to  that  of  the  non- 
Jewish  races  of  Europe,  except  as  connected  with  their  characteristically  strict  obser- 
vance of  the  sabbath. 


34  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

the  need  and  effect  of  the  supplementary  rest  of  Sunday, 
to  maintain  them  at  the  level  of  highest  efficiency. 


e 
e 


A/ 


H>^ 


Explanation.  —  m,  morning;  e,  evening;  S,  Sunday.  Beginning  on  ]\Ionday  morning, 
each  downward  stroke  marks  the  daily  expenditure  of  energy,  and  the  upward  stroke  the 
nightly  recovery,  which  does  not  rise  quite  to  the  height  of  the  previous  morning;  so  that  there 
is  a  gradual  decline  during  the  week,  which  only  the  prolonged  rest  of  Sunday  repairs.  The 
dotted  line  shows  the  continuous  decline  of  the  forces  when  they  are  not  renewed  by  the  weekly 
rest. 

Our  attention  has  been  confined,  thus  far,  to  the  physi- 
cal and  mental  nature  of  man.  But  man  has  also  a  spirit- 
ual nature.  It  is  subject  to  natural  law ;  or,  rather, 
whatever  is  a  natural  law  for  man  must  respect  as  well  his 
spiritual  being,  must  be  adapted  to  his  needs  and  condi- 
tions as  such.  The  evidence  in  this  direction,  of  the 
natural  law  of  weekly  rest,  is  given  abundantly  by  the 
religious  history  of  man.  Indeed,  there  are  few  who  pro- 
fess to  pay  any  regard  to  the  wants  of  their  spiritual 
natures,  who  are  not  ready  to  set  their  own  hands  to  the 
testimony  of  one  who  was  regarded  as  holding  lax  views 
of  the  sabbath,  —  the  late  F.  W.  Robertson  of  Brighton, 
—  when  he  said,  — 

...  "  I  am  more  and  more  sure  by  experience  that  the  reason  for 
the  observance  of  the  sabbath  lies  deep  in  the  everlasting  necessities 
of  human  nature,  and  that,  as  long  as  man  is  man,  the  blessedness  of 
keeping  it  not  as  a  day  of  rest  only,  but  as  a  day  of  spiritual  rest,  will 
'never  be  annulled.  .  .  . 

"  For  the  sabbath  was  made  for  man.  God  made  it  for  men  in  a 
•certain  spiritual  state,  because  they  needed  it.     The  need,  therefore, 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  35 

is  deeply  hidden  in  human  nature.  He  who  can  dispense  with  it 
must  be  holy  and  spiritual  indeed.  And  he  who,  still  unholy  and  un- 
spiritual,  would  yet  dispense  with  it,  is  a  man  who  would  fain  be  wiser 
than  his  Maker.  We,  Christians  as  we  are.  still  need  the  law,  both  in 
its  restraints,  and  in  its  aids  to  our  weakness.  .  .  . 

"  I  certainly  do  feel  by  experience  the  eternal  obligation,  because 
of  the  eternal  necessity,  of  the  sabbath.  The  soul  withers  without  it : 
it  thrives  in  proportion  to  the  fidelity  of  its  observance."  —  Life^  Bos- 
ton, 1865,  vol.  i.  p.  248;  Serm.,  2d  series,  p.  205. 

The  argument  has  been  presented  in  the  form  of  a  syl- 
logism, by  Professor  E.  H.  Plumptre,  thus  :  — 

"What  the  Christian  society  has  accepted  everywhere,  and  in  all 
ages  (obviously  eccentric  departures  from  the  rule  excepted),  may 
legitimately  be  regarded  as  essential  to  the  Christian  life  ; 

"  The  religious  observance  of  the  Lord's  Day  has  been  so  recog- 
nized : 

"Therefore  the  religious  observance  of  the  Lord's  Day  may  legiti- 
mately be  regarded  as  essential  to  the  Christian  life."  —  Contempo- 
rary Review,  vol.  i.  p.  168. 

Montalembert  presented  the  argument  in  yet  briefer 
form  :  *'  There  is  no  religion  without  worship,  and  there 
is  no  worship  without  the  sabbath." 

There  is  another  branch  of  inquiry,  —  the  evidence  of  a 
natural  law  of  rest  for  man  in  society,  the  family,  the  com- 
munity, the  state,  — into  which  our  limits  will  not  permit 
us  to  enter. 

II.  Having  thus  indicated  the  evidence  in  favor  of  a 
natural  law  of  weekly  rest,  furnished  by  experience  and 
science,  we  come  to  the  second  inquiry  proposed,  viz.,  the 
bearings  of  this  law  upon  other  points  of  the  Sunday 
question.  As  these  points  are  each  separately  discussed  in 
other  papers,  let  us  merely  glance  at  that  view  of  each  which 
is  given  from  the  standpoint  of  a  recognized  natural  law. 

I.  If  the  weekly  rest  is  a  natural  law,  it  is  a  natural 
right ;  and  the  state  should  secure  to  each  citizen,  so  far 
as  practicable,  its  enjoyment. 


36  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  KS*. 

2.  If  the  weekly  rest  is  a  natural  law,  then  its  observ- 
ance is  a  moral  duty,  and  not  merely  a  positive  ordi- 
nance. Whately  defines  positive  ordinances  to  be  those 
which  become  duties  because  they  are  commanded,  and 
moral  precepts  those  which  are  commanded  because  they 
are  right  in  themselves.  Now,  if  there  is  a  natural  law 
of  weekly  rest,  obedience  to  it  is  right ;  and,  because  it  is 
right,  it  is  commanded.  The  distinction  between  the 
fourth  and  other  commands  of  the  Decalogue,  that  it  is 
positive  while  they  are  moral,  ceases  as  soon  as  the  natu- 
ral law  of  weekly  rest  is  ascertained. 

3.  The  recognition  of  this  natural  law  of  weekly  rest 
constitutes  a  common  ground  for  the  different  theories  in 
respect  to  the  sabbath,  or  Lord's  Day,  which  divide  the 
Christian  Church.  On  the  one  hand,  there  is  widely  held 
in  the  Church,  what  has  been  called,  for  convenience,  the 
Continental  view,  —  that  the  sabbath  of  the  Old  Testament 
and  the  Lord's  Day  of  the  Christian  Church  are  two  dis- 
tinct institutions ;  that  the  former  was  matter  of  explicit 
law,  a  law  binding  on  the  Jews  alone ;  that  the  latter  is 
not  matter  of  law,  but  of  privilege  only,  or,  if  of  law,  it  is 
only  a  law  of  the  Church,  like  other  church  festivals.  On 
the  other  hand,  what  has  been  called  the  Anglo-American 
view  holds  the  sabbath  and  the  Lord's  Day  to  be  substan- 
tially one,  the  basis  of  law  under  the  former  not  being 
lost  but  strengthened,  while  at  the  same  time  it  is  trans- 
figured, by  the  brighter  light  and  blessedness  of  the  latter. 
Now,  the  advocates  of  the  Continental  theory,  who  exclude 
so  jealously  the  thought  of  a  divine  command  from  their 
conception  of  the  Lord's  Day,  do,  almost  without  excep- 
tion, acknowledge  it  as  founded  on  a  natural  law  of 
weekly  rest.  But,  if  God  has  made  man  such  that  he 
needs  the  weekly  rest,  it  is  God's  will  surely  that  man 
observe  that  rest.  And  does  not  the  ascertained  will  of 
God  constitute  divine  law?     Have  we   not,  then,  in  the 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  37 

natural  law  of  weekly  rest,  a  divine  law,  vested,  like  all 
other  of  God's  laws,  with  divine  authority  and  obligation  ? 
The  sabbath  of  the  Decalogue,  the  Lord's  Day  of  the 
Christian  Church,  each  is  an  embodiment  of  this  law.  Are 
they  not,  then,  one  in  substance  as  in  authority  ? 

4.  The  recognition  of  this  natural  law  of  weekly  rest 
has  an  <^ /r/^r/ bearing  upon  our  understanding  of  God's 
word.  All  the  other  great  laws  of  our  nature  —  obedience 
to  parents,  chastity,  &c.  —  find  each  its  counterpart  in  the 
written  Word.  Each  is  there  explicitly  enjoined,  with  a 
"Thus  saith  the  Lord:  Thou  shalt ;  Thou  shalt  not." 
Now,  with  the  knowledge  which  we  have  of  this  natural 
law  of  weekly  rest,  should  we  not  expect  to  find  in  the 
Bible  an  explicit  recognition  of  it,  as  of  the  other  great 
laws  of  our  nature }  We  open  the  sacred  volume ;  and 
there  on  its  very  first  pages,  after  the  account  of  man's 
creation  and  the  establishment  of  the  family,  comes  the 
declaration,  ''Thus  the  heaven  and  the  earth  were  fin- 
ished, and  all  the  host  of  them,  and  on  the  seventh  day 
God  ended  his  work  which  he  had  made :  and  he  rested 
on  the  seventh  day  from  all  his  work  which  he  had  made. 
And  God  blessed  the  seventh  day,  and  sanctified  it,  be- 
cause that  in  it  he  had  rested  from  all  his  work  which  God 
created  and  made."  Is  this  recorded  here,  proleptically, 
out  of  its  historical  place,  and  with  relation  to  the  Jews 
alone,  to  give  divine  indorsement  to  a  ceremonial  and 
municipal  Jewish  institution.?  Or  is  it  not,  rather,  just 
what  it  appears  to  be,  and  what  in  some  form  we  should 
have  expected,  —  a  divine  recognition  of  this  great  law 
which  God  had  already  imposed  on  the  nature  of  man,  of 
the  whole  race,  sanctioning  it  in  some  sense  by  his  own 
example,  and,  by  making  it  a  memorial  of  himself  as  the 
great  Creator,  lifting  it  above  the  sphere  of  a  merely  phy- 
sical law,  and  making  its  observance  a  spiritual  sacrament 
as  well  ? 


3  8  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS, 

And  this  law  of  weekly  rest  remains  unrepealed,  un- 
changed, when,  for  reasons  of  a  moral  expediency,  under 
the  New  Testament,  it  is  reckoned  no  longer  as  the  last, 
but  as  the  first,  day  of  the  week ;  and  when,  in  addition 
to  its  spiritual  sanction  as  a  memorial  of  the  creation,  it 
bears  a  yet  higher  significance  as  a  memorial  of  the  new 
creation,  the  redemption  of  man. 

5.  Our  knowledge  of  the  natural  law  of  weekly  rest  has 
a  bearing  upon  the  question  as  to  how  the  law  of  the  sab- 
bath or  Lord's  Day  is  to  be  kept,  —  upon  the  casuistry  of 
the  Sunday  question. 

The  law,  so  far  as  stated  in  the  Bible,  is  very  brief  in 
terms:  —  Six  days  thou  shalt  labor,  one  day  thou  shalt 
rest.  The  Jews,  who  perhaps  knew  little  of  any  natu- 
ral law  in  the  matter,  were  guided  in  the  practical  appli- 
cation of  the  command  by  sundry  specific  rules.  How, 
under  the  gospel  and  in  the  absence  of  specific  rules, 
shall  the  command  be  understood  and  applied  1  Our 
Lord,  when  this  question  of  the  mode  of  sabbath  observ- 
ance came  before  him,  asserted  the  truth,  ''The  sabbath 
is  made  for  man," — for  man's  benefit  and  use,  —  clearly 
implying  that  man  needed  it,  that  it  is  adapted  to  man's 
wants.  In  other  words,  he  afifirmed  the  natural  law  of  the 
sabbath.  So  he  teaches  us  how  we  are  to  obey  the  com- 
mand. Keep  it  in  such  a  way  as  best  to  secure  the  benign 
ends  for  which  it  was  given, — rest  and  refreshment  for 
the  body  and  the  soul,  under  those  limitations  of  necessity 
and  mercy  which  apply  to  all  ordinances  made  for  man. 

In  closing  this  brief  and  necessarily  incomplete  discus- 
sion of  the  natural  law  of  weekly  rest,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered that  the  obligation  to  obey  any  revealed  law  of  God 
does  not  depend  on  our  understanding  of  the  reasons  for 
it ;  and  that  any  light  which  comes  to  us,  as  to  the  natural 
grounds  of  a  command,  while  it  makes  our  obedience  the 
more  intelligent,  should  make  it  none  the  less  implicit. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  39 


PHYSICAL,  INTELLECTUAL,  AND   ECONOMIC   ADVAN- 
TAGES  OF  THE  SABBATH. 

BY   REV.   JOSEPH    COOK,    OF    BOSTON. 
(Read  by  Rev.  Professor  J.  W.  Churchill,  of  Andover  Theological  Seminary.) 

Infidel  France,  during  her  Revolution,  while  oppos- 
ing Christianity  with  merciless  hatred,  and  abolishing  the 
Christian  calendar,  yet  made  provision  for  a  periodic  day 
of  rest,  and  enforced  its  observance  by  law.  An  enact- 
ment of  17  Thermidor,  An.  VL,  required  the  public  offices, 
schools,  workshops,  and  stores  to  be  closed,  and  prohibited 
sales,  except  of  eatables  and  medicines,  and  public  labor, 
except  in  the  country  during  seedtime  and  harvest.  This 
action  of  a  secularized  anti-Christian  republic  is  a  suffi- 
cient reply  to  any  who  think  Sunday  laws  are  demanded 
only  by  the  Christian  prejudices  of  modern  civilized 
nations.  The  French  legislation  required  rest  for  the 
population  on  only  one  day  in  ten,  but  it  recognized 
emphatically  the  great  natural  law  of  periodicity  in  its 
application  to  labor  and  repose.  The  black,  far-flapping 
Gehenna-wings  of  the  French  Revolution,  flying  through 
history  as  a  bat  through  a  parlor  at  night,  and  putting  out 
the  candles,  left  the  taper  of  a  legalized  day  of  rest  still 
shining. 

It  is  now  two  hundred  years  since  Great  Britain  placed 
on  her  statute-books  a  law  providing  that  *'  no  tradesman, 
artificer,  workman,  laborer,  or  other  person  whatsoever, 
shall  do  or  exercise  any  worldly  labor,  blisiness,  or  work  of 
their  ordinary  callings,  upon  the  Lord's  Day  or  any  part 
thereof,  works  of  necessity  and  charity  only  excepted." 
This   is   the   language  of   an    enactment   of   the  29th  of 


40  SABDA  TH  ESS  A  VS. 

Charles  II.,  1678.  It  is  yet  the  basis  of  British  and 
American  Sunday  laws.  The  physical  and  economic 
advantages  of  a  weekly  day  of  rest  support  it  as  a  civil 
institution  among  eighty  millions  of  English-speaking 
people,  embracing  the  two  most  free,  wealthy,  industrious, 
and  powerful  nations  of  the  globe. 

It  is  fifteen  hundred  years  since 'Constantine  put  into 
execution  the  law  which  brought  an  unwonted  hush  one 
day  in  seven  to  all  industry  in  the  Roman  dominion.  Ten 
centuries  from  the  time  when  Christianity  closed  her  chief 
political  struggles,  the  United  States — a  republic  built 
chiefly  by  Christianity,  and  governing  more  square  miles 
than  Coesar  ever  ruled  over  —  calls  peace  to  the  industries 
of  her  continental  domain  one  day  in  seven,  and  sends 
nine  millions  of  her  population  —  one  in  five  —  to  a 
World's  Fair,  and  shuts  its  doors  every  Sunday. 

What  are  the  great  industrial  and  economic  advantages 
of  a  weekly  day  of  rest,  which  have  preserved  Sunday  as 
a  civil  institution,  under  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the 
fittest,  through  all  the  changes  and  turmoil  since  Con- 
stantine .'' 

At  the  Dublin  meeting  of  the  British  Association  for 
the  Advancement  of  Science,  on  the  4th  of  September, 
1857,  Mr.  Bianconi,  to  whom  Ireland  is  greatly  indebted 
for  establishing  and  maintaining  its  system  of  public  cars, 
presented  in  a  scientific  paper  the  results  of  his  extensive 
experience.  "I  found,"  he  said,  ''that  I  could  work  a 
horse  with  more  advantage  eight  miles  a  day  for  six  days, 
than  six  miles  a  day  for  seven  days ;  and  therefore  I  dis- 
covered that  by  not  working  on  Sunday  I  made  a  saving 
of  twelve  per  cent."  This  mathematical  statement  of  the 
commercial  value  of  piety  extorted  a  laugh  from  the  men 
of  science  ;  but  the  application  of  arithmetic  to  the  solu- 
tion of  the  problem  of  the  right  arrangement  of  work 
and  rest  for  man  and  beast  is  neither  ridiculous  nor  unim- 
portant. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  4 1 

Suppose  that  an  operative  in  a  mill,  a  farmer  at  his 
plough,  a  clerk  behind  his  counter,  and  a  student  at  his 
desk,  are  taken  as  representatives  of  society  at  large,  and 
given  their  choice  either  to  work  ten  hours  a  day  for  six 
days  of  the  week,  and  rest  the  seventh  day,  or  to  work 
eight  and  a  half  hours  a  day  for  seven  days,  and  have  no 
rest-day.  In  the  former  case  they  would  work  sixty  hours 
a  week,  and  in  the  latter  slightly  less  ;  but  I  venture  to 
affirm  that  each  of  the  four  would  choose  the  former  alter- 
native, and  be  justified  by  experience  in  doing  so.  When 
a  man  must  work  sixty  hours  a  week,  what  are  the  reasons 
which  make  it  wise  for  him  to  labor  for  six  days  and  do  all 
his  work,  and  rest  the  seventh,  rather  than  to  divide  the 
labor  equally  between  the  seven  days  .'' 

1.  Monotony  in  toil  is  not  broken  up  when  the  seventh 
day  must  contain  as  much  labor  as  either  of  the  preceding 
six  days. 

2.  Without  the  breaking-up  of  the  monotony  of  labor, 
there  can  be  no  adequate  rest. 

3.  Without  adequate  rest,  the  pace  and  speed  of  labor 
soon  slacken. 

4.  Lashed  forward  monotonously,  without  proper  rest  in 
their  work,  the  brain  and  body  fall  into  disease. 

5.  Productive  power  is  therefore,  by  unalterable  natural 
law,  dependent  for  its  highest  efficiency  on  periodic  rest 
of  such  length  and  frequency  as  will  break  up  the  mono- 
tony of  toil,  and  maintain  the  physical  and  mental  elas- 
ticity of  the  laborer. 

It  is  very  significant,  that  while  sixty  hours  of  labor 
may  not  be  too  much  for  body  or  brain,  if  performed  on 
six  days  of  the  week,  and  followed  by  a  day  of  rest,  the 
same  number  of  hours  of  labor,  if  distributed  equally 
through  the  seven  days,  may  ruin  both  body  and  brain. 
It  is  chiefly  this  physiological  and  arithmetical  fact  which 
has  preserved  Sunday  as  a  civil  institution  since  Con- 
stantine. 


SABBATH  ESSAYS. 


Coleridge  said  tliat  God  gives  civilization,  in  its  Sun- 
days, fifty-two  springs  a  year. 

In  Switzerland,  recent  legislation  grants  to  all  railroad 
employees  and  government  officials  the  concession  of  at 
least  one  Sunday  in  every  three. 

Two  drovers  start  from  Ohio  together  for  Philadelphia. 
One  drives  Sundays,  and  the  other  does  not.  The  latter 
passes  the  former,  and  is  two  days  ahead  in  the  market. 

After  a  Continental  Sunday  comes  a  Continental  blue 
Monday.  It  is  very  common  in  France  and  Germany  and 
even  in  England,  among  the  lower  class  of  operatives,  for 
Monday  to  be  an  idle  day,  on  account  of  the  necessity  of 
obtaining  recuperation  after  the  dissipations  of  Sunday. 
Let  us  have  the  Parisian  or  Continental  Sunday,  and  our 
trades  will  have  the  Continental  unproductive  Monday. 
"  Operatives  are  perfectly  right,"  said  John  Stuart  Mill, 
*'in  thinking  that,  if  all  worked  on  Sunday,  seven  days' 
work  would  be  given  for  six  days'  wages."  Manufacturers 
abroad  often  affirm  that  American  operatives  can  well 
demand  higher  prices  than  the  Continental,  because  they 
are  not  incapacitated  for  work  on  Monday  by  the  neces- 
sity of  getting  rid  of  the  effects  of  Sunday's  dissipation. 

In  portions  of  California,  however,  the  days  of  the  week 
yet  are,  Tuesday,  Wednesday,  Thursday,  Friday,  Saturday, 
Picnic  Day,  Blue  Monday.  It  is  simply  a  question  of  the 
distribution  of  hours  of  labor  and  rest,  whether  a  man 
works  sixty  hours  a  week,  and  has  a  jaded,  unproductive 
Monday,  or  the  same  number  of  hours,  and  has  an  elastic 
Monday.  This  is  the  large  magic  of  periodicity,  the  in- 
dustrial sorcery  of  mere  arithmetical  distribution  of  hours. 
The  law  by  which  these  results  are  effected  is  written 
in  the  very  constitution  of  man,  and  will  not  soon  be  re- 
pealed, nor  even  modified,  by  either  capitalists  or  trades- 
unions. 

Safe  popular  freedom  consists  of  four  things,  and  can- 


THE  SABBA  TH  IN  NA  TURE.  43 

not  be  compounded  out  of  any  three  of  the  four,  —  the 
diffusion  of  liberty,  the  diffusion  of  intelHgence,  the  diffu- 
sion of  property  when  it  is  earned,  and  of  the  opportu- 
nity to  earn  it,  and  the  diffusion  of  conscientiousness.  In 
the  latter  work  the  Church  is  the  chief  agent,  and  her 
most  important  instrumentality  is  the  Sunday.  Goldwin 
Smith  very  justly  says  that  it  is  the  freedom  of  religion 
and  the  educating  power  of  Sundays  which  explain  the 
average  prosperity  of  America. 

There  can  be  no  diffusion  of  conscientiousness  adequate 
to  protect  society  from  danger  under  universal  suffrage, 
unless  a  day  is  set  apart  for  the  periodical  moral  and  reli- 
gious instruction  of  the  masses.  Sunday  laws  are  justi- 
fied in  a  republic  by  the  right  of  self-preservation.  The 
Sunday  is  the  only  adequate  teacher  of  political  sanity. 
It  is  the  poor  man's  day  of  rest.  The  enemy  of  laws 
providing  opportunity  for  the  religious  instruction  and 
the  physical  rest  of  society  is  the  enemy  of  the  working 
masses.  Among  the  enemies  of  the  masses,  therefore,  are 
to  be  reckoned  railroads  that  break  Sunday  laws  ;  Sunday 
theatres  and  public  amusements ;  the  opponents  of  the 
laws  for  closing  rumshops  on  Sundays  ;  immigrants  who 
favor  the  Parisian  Sunday ;  churches,  Romish  or  Protes- 
tant, that  turn  half  of  Sunday  into  a  holiday ;  and  secu- 
larists who  would  abolish  all  Sunday  laws. 

Working-men  desire  to  build  co-operation  up  into  a 
palace  for  the  protection  of  themselves  and  their  children, 
and  God  speed  their  effort  to  defend  their  own  !  But  how 
can  co-operation  succeed  without  the  large  confidence  of 
man  in  man  }  And  how  can  that  come  without  the  moral 
culture  given  by  the  right  use  of  Sundays  }  Co-operation 
and  the  allied  schemes  for  the  benefit  of  labor  fail  in  a 
majority  of  cases,  because  men  are  not  honest.  How  are 
men  to  be  made  honest  without  a  time  set  apart  for  moral 
and  religious  culture  1     The  populatioit   which  habitually 


44  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

neglects  the  pidpit,  or  its  equivalent,  one  day  i7i  seven,  can 
ultimately  be  led  by  cJiarlatans,  and  will  be.  Give  America, 
from  sea  to  sea,  the  Parisian  Sunday,  and  in  two  hundred 
years  all  our  greatest  cities  will  be  politically  under  the 
heels  of  the  feather-heads,  the  roughs,  the  sneaks,  and  the 
money-gripes.  Abolish  Sunday  and  the  social  health  it 
fosters,  and  in  less  than  a  century  the  conflict  between 
capital  and  labor  would  issue  here  in  petroleum  fire- 
bottles.  Capital  in  our  great  municipahties  is  fleeced 
now  to  the  skin.  Does  it  wish  such  political  disorder  to 
spring  up  as  shall  cut  it  through  the  cellular  integument 
to  the  quick .?     If  it  does,  let  capital  abolish  Sunday. 

I  am  no  fanatic,  I  hope,  as  to  Sunday  ;  but  I  look 
abroad  over  the  map  of  popular  freedom  in  the  world,  and 
it  does  not  seem  to  me  accidental  that  Switzerland,  Scot- 
land, England,  and  the  United  States,  the  countries  which 
best  observe  Sunday,  constitute  almost  the  entire  map  of 
safe  popular  government. 

Hallam  says  that  European  despotic  rulers  have  culti- 
vated, as  Charles  II.  did  in  the  day  of  the  '*  Book  of 
Sports,"  a  love  of  pastime  on  Sundays,  in  order  that  the 
people  might  be  more  quiet  under  political  distresses. 
"A  holiday  sabbath  is  the  ally  of  despotism."  Wherever 
either  the  Romish  or  the  Parisian  Sunday  has  prevailed 
for  generations,  it  has  made  the  lives  of  peasant  popula- 
tions a  prolonged  childhood. 

An  important  distinction  exists  between  Sunday  observ- 
ance as  a  religions  ordinance  and  as  a  civil  institution. 
American  courts,  while  enforcing  the  Sunday  laws,  dis- 
claim interference  with  religion.  They  base  these  laws 
on  various  secular  grounds,  among  which  are  the  right  of 
all  classes  to  rest,  so  far  as  practicable,  on  one  day  in 
seven  ;  the  right  to  undisturbed  worship  on  the  day  set 
apart  for  this  purpose  by  the  great  majority  of  the  people ; 
the  decent  respect  which  should  be  paid  to  the  institutions 


THE  SABBA  TH  IN  NA  TURK.  45 

of  the  people ;  the  value  to  the  state  of  the  weekly  rest- 
day,  as  a  means  of  that  popular  intelligence  and  morality 
on  which  free  institutions  depend  for  their  maintenance. 

The  Supreme  Court  of  New  York,  in  sustaining  one 
of  the  Sunday  laws,  says,  ''The  act  complained  of  here 
compels  no  religious  observance,  and  offences  against  it 
are  punishable  not  as  sins  against  God,  but  as  injurious 
to  and  having  a  malignant  influence  on  society.  It  rests 
upon  the  same  foundation  as  a  multitude  of  other  laws 
upon  our  statute-book,  —  such  as  those  against  gambling, 
lotteries,  keeping  disorderly  houses,  polygamy,  horse- 
racing." 

The  action  of  the  State  as  to  Sunday  laws  proceeds 
upon  the  principle  that  the  liberty  of  rest  for  each  de- 
pends on  a  law  of  rest  for  all. 

A  peculiar  Christian  law,  you  say,  justifies  Sunday 
observance  in  this  country.  A  peculiar  Christian  law 
justifies  monogamy ;  and  we  have  lately  had  a  decision, 
from  the  Supreme  Court  itself,  that  polygamy  can  be 
opposed  under  the  law  of  this  nation.  Monogamy  is  a 
distinctively  Christian  institution  ;  and  if,  according  to  the 
highest  authority  known  to  our  courts,  we  have  a  right  to 
oppose  polygamy,  and  uphold  monogamy,  we  are  in  that 
doing  something  as  distinctively  Christian  as  we  are  when 
we  uphold  fair,  tolerant  Sunday  laws.  If  you  attack  the 
latter,  I  point  you  to  our  judicial  decision  as  to  the  former, 
and  tell  you  that  the  United  States  are,  after  all,  based 
politically  upon  the  foundations  not  of  the  French,  but  of 
American,  republicanism.  Not  Mirabeau,  not  the  leaders 
of  the  reign  of  terror,  are  our  prophets  in  America ;  but 
Washington  and  Adams  and  Madison,  and  the  men  who 
so  founded  New  England  upon  moral  training  that  prop- 
erty can  be  safely  diffused  here. 

Lift  an  archipelago  above  the  sea,  and  it  is  no  longer 
a  set  of  separate  islands,  but  a  single  mass  of  firm  land. 


46  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

Lift  the  warring  interests  of  classes  out  of  the  sea  of 
selfishness,  and  the  solidity  of  society  is  secured.  In 
Mrs.  Stowe's  "Poganuc  People,"  class  prejudices  fade  out 
of  New  England  towns  only  during  a  religious  revival.  I 
have  seen  factory  proprietors,  managers,  and  operatives 
sitting  side  by  side  on  the  floor  in  the  same  aisle  in  an 
overcrowded  church,  and  singing  psalms  from  the  same 
book,  when  a  few  weeks  previously  they  had  been  almost 
ready  to  draw  knives,  and  use  them  on  each  other's 
throats. 

When  our  fathers  on  Clark's  Island,  on  the  Massachu- 
setts coast,  rested  on  their  first  sabbath  day,  they  were  set- 
ting an  example  which  the  industrial,  economic,  intellect- 
ual, and  political,  as  well  as  the  religious  experience,  of 
civilized  nations  for  ten  centuries  had  shown  to  be  a  wise 
one ;  and  this  verdict  of  history  has  now  been  confirmed 
by  two  and  a  half  centuries  more  of  experience  on  our 
own  soil.  It  is  to  experience  that  the  friends  of  the 
sabbath  as  a  civil  institution  may  confidently  make  their 
appeal. 

Many  men  now  alive  have  slept  in  houses  with  unbolted 
doors  in  the  country-side  of  New  England  fifty  years  ago. 
If  we  wish  to  restore  to  public  and  private  life  that  sweet 
security,  and  to  industrial  life  that  peace,  which  filled  New 
England  when  she  had  a  sabbath  worthy  of  the  name,  we 
must  imitate  the  hallowed  Sundays  of  our  fathers.  I  look 
back  to  the  moonlight  dropping  through  the  open  doors  of 
New  England  country  homes  in  the  midnights  of  fifty 
or  eighty  years  ago,  and  find  in  that  unsuspicious  radiance, 
and  in  the  religious  culture,  the  united  citizenship,  the 
theocratic  brotherhood,  which  lay  beneath  it,  the  pillar 
of  fire,  and  the  only  pillar  of  fire,  that  can  lead  us  out  of 
communism  and  socialism  and  the  political  dangers  of 
universal  suffrage. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  47 


THE   SABBATH  A   NECESSITY  TO   ALL   FORMS   OF 
SOCIAL  REGENERATION. 

BY   REV.    J.    O.    PECK,    D.D.,    OF   BROOKLYN,    N.Y. 

In  the  dark  days  of  1863,  Dr.  Robert  J.  Breckenridge 
of  Kentucky  wrote  a  patriotic  letter  to  the  Hon.  Robert 
C.  Winthrop  of  Massachusetts,  dated  June  25,  bearing 
this  pregnant  passage :  ''  In  past  years  I  have  spoken 
freely  in  disapprobation  of  much  that  has  been  felt  as  an 
evil  influence  from  New  England,  as  it  appeared  to  me. 
But  I  never  doubted  —  and  now  less  than  ever  —  that  the 
roots  of  whatever  produces  freedom,  equality,  and  high 
civilization  are  more  deeply  set  in  New  England  than  in 
any  other  equal  population  on  the  face  of  the  earth." 

This  generous  and  merited  compliment  —  if  still  merited 
—  imposes  upon  New  England,  and  upon  Massachusetts  as 
the  informing  genius  of  New  England,  the  heroic  respon- 
sibility of  making  on  her  soil  the  Thermopylae  and  Spar- 
tan defence  of  the  Christian  sabbath,  which  is  one  of  the 
chief  sources  of  her  freedom,  equality,  and  high  civiliza- 
tion, and  of  resisting  the  infidel  hordes  which  would  break 
through  her  sacred  gates,  and  trample  under  their  vandal 
feet  the  welfare,  the  social  order,  the  morality,  the  religion, 
and  the  prophetic  hopes  of  man.  And  the  Massachusetts 
sabbath  conventions  are  the  sign  and  pledge  that  New 
England  is  aroused  and  armed,  and  sworn  to  defend  the 
sacred  pass  against  the  ruthless  invaders,  with  a  zeal  and 
moral  heroism  kindled  at  the  altar-fires  of  her  early  de- 
fence of  civil  liberty  in  a  Christian  state,  and  her  later 
devotion  to  the  overthrow  of  slavery  and  intemperance. 
She  is  in  line  of  battle  again  with  the  moral  forces  of  the 


48  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

universe ;  and  she  is  marching  again  to  victory  under  the 
banner  and  leadership  of  the  Lord  of  hosts.  The  con- 
science of  Christian  pubHc  sentiment  has  been  quickened 
in  many  directions,  and  will  soon  take  the  field  in  full 
strength.  The  encroachments  upon  and  desecrations  of 
the  Christian  sabbath  have  shown  us  too  tardily  that  the 
Philistines  are  upon  us.  The  Sunday  excursions  by  rail 
and  steamboat,  the  revelry  and  riot  of  beer-gardens,  the 
godless  sacred  concerts  on  Sunday  evenings,  the  inde- 
fensible camp-meeting  trains  on  Sunday,  indicate  the 
breaches  in  the  wall,  summon  us  to  their  repair,  and  to 
the  defence  of  the  citadel  of  the  Christian  sabbath. 

But  the  discrete  phase  of  the  sabbath  question  assigned 
me  —  "the  sabbath  a  necessity  to  all  forms  of  social  re- 
generation "  —  demands  a  few 

DEFINITIONS. 

1.  Society  is  the  union  of  many  individuals  in  a  common 
interest. 

2.  Regeneration  is  the  act  of  forming  into  a  new  and 
better  state. 

3.  Social  Regeneration  is  the  remoulding  of  society  into 
a  better  state. 

4.  The  Sabbath  is  a  weekly  holy-day,  divinely  instituted, 
consecrated  to  physical  and  intellectual  rest  and  to  reli- 
gious devotion. 

5.  The  Civil  Sunday  is  a  police  regulation  of  the  state 
for  the  preservation  of  social  order,  public  morals,  and 
civic  welfare.  The  state  cannot  enforce  the  religious  ob- 
servance of  the  sabbath ;  but  it  can  prohibit  the  desecra- 
tion of  the  civil  Sunday  by  disquiet,  disorder,  dissipation, 
and  demoralizing  influences  that  undermine  the  peace  and 
prosperity  and  protection  of  society. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  49 


ORIGIN    OF    THE    SABBATH. 

The  sabbath  —  a  weekly  uniform  day  of  rest  and  reU- 
gious  observance  —  was  instituted  of  God  in  Eden,  and 
hallowed  by  his  blessing.  It  is  pre-eminently  a  religious 
institution.  Holiness  is  the  essential  atmosphere  of  the 
day.  It  is  God's  benediction,  not  bondage,  on  the  world. 
Next  to  the  family,  it  is  the  oldest  institution  established  of 
God  for  the  good  of  man.  It  is  fundamental,  imperative, 
and  perpetual,  like  the  marriage  relation, — the  two  great 
unchanged  and  unchangeable  institutions  saved  to  man  from 
the  ruin  of  Paradise.  The  necessity  of  the  sabbath  con- 
tinues parallel  with  the  necessity  of  the  family.  The  one 
can  no  more  be  abrogated  without  involving  the  moral 
disorder,  degeneracy,  and  degradation  of  society,  than  the 
other.  The  sabbath  was  made  for  man  in  the  same  high 
sense  that  the  family  was  made  for  man.  It  is  a  colossal 
institution,  wide  as  humanity,  perpetual  as  time,  and  deeply 
rooted  in  the  constitution  of  man's  nature,  like  the  sunless 
pillars  of  the  mountains  in  the  heart  of  the  earth,  so  that 
the  body,  brain,  and  soul  of  man  are  penetrated  by  the 
law  of  the  sabbath  to  that  degree  that  to  uproot  the  day 
of  rest  would  tear  up  society  by  the  roots. 

It  is  as  truly  a  law  of  man's  nature  as  it  is  a  religious 
institution,  and  is  enjoined  upon  man's  observance  be- 
cause it  is  a  natural  law  of  his  highest  welfare.  I  say  it 
reverently,  that  God  himself  could  not  abolish  the  weekly 
day  of  rest  without  violence  to  man's  physical,  intellect- 
ual, and  moral  needs.  Every  weary  body  and  tired  brain 
and  uncomforted  soul,  harnessed  in  the  everlasting,  un- 
resting treadmill  of  work  and  wear  and  waste,  for  three 
hundred  and  sixty-five  days  per  year,  would  rightfully  pro- 
test against  the  injustice  and  cruelty  of  abolishing  the 
day  of  rest,  which  is  as  necessary  to  man  as  the  night  is 
for  sleep. 


50  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

NEVER    ABROGATED. 

And  this  sabbath  which  God  made  for  man  at  Eden 
has  never  been  abrogated  nor  modified  in  substance,  and 
never  can  be  annulled  unless  man's  original,  constitutional 
nature  and  needs  are  changed.  It  is  a  necessity  of  man 
and  society  to-day  as  much  as  in  the  beginning. 

We  find  this  sabbath  in  existence  before  the  giving 
of  the  Decalogue ;  since,  some  weeks  preceding  that,  the 
Israelites  were  prohibited  gathering  manna  on  the  sabbath 
day.  That  it  was  unmentioned  during  the  lives  of  the 
patriarchs,  no  more  argues  its  non-existence  than  the  fact 
that  it  is  unmentioned  in  the  books  of  Joshua,  Judges,  First 
and  Second  Samuel,  proves  its  non-existence  after  we 
know  it  was  in  the  Decalogue  and  Jewish  ceremonial  law. 

RE-AFFIRMED    AT   SINAI. 

It  was  simply  re-established  at  Sinai  in  awful  solem- 
nity not  by  Moses  but  by  Jehovah  ;  not  on  parchment  as 
transient,  but  lithographed  by  the  finger  of  God  in  stone 
in  token  of  everlastingness  ;  not  in  the  civil  or  ceremonial 
law  of  the  Jews  that  should  pass  away,  but  in  the  moral 
law  of  the  Decalogue  which  is  for  all  men  and  all  ages, 
one  jot  or  tittle  of  which,  Christ  declared,  should  never 
pass  away.  The  exceptional  manner  in  which  it  is 
.ordained,  ''Remember  the  sabbath  day  to  keep  it  holy," 
proves  it  an  existing  institutQ,  and  points  back  to  its  pri- 
meval institution.  But  by  the  finger  of  God  it  was  raised 
into  equal  authority  and  permanence  with  the  rest  of  the 
Ten  Commandments.  It  is  inserted  in  the  middle  of  the 
great  moral  code  which  is  in  force  to-day ;  and  it  would 
seem  strange  that  the  three  preceding  and  six  succeeding 
commandments  are  binding  to  the  end  of  time,  while  the 
fourth  is  abolished  as  no  longer  obligatory.  The  Fourth 
Commandment  is  as  binding  to-day  as  the  sixth  or  seventh. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  5 1 

No  man  can  put  his  finger  on  the  chapter  or  verse  which 
abrogates  the  sabbath — a  weekly  holy-day  —  as  a  part  of 
the  moral  law  perpetually  obligatory  on  all  men. 

THE    CHRISTIAN    SABBATH. 

Christ  as  the  ''lord  of  the  sabbath"  took  this  rest-day 
with  him  into  the  sepulchre,  and  divested  it  of  Jewish  rit- 
ualism, tradition,  and  burdensomeness.  It  rose  with  him 
in  the  resurrection  on  the  first  day,  unchanged  in  sub- 
stance or  obligation  ;  was  sanctified  by  the  descent  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  at  Pentecost ;  was  regenerated  and  Christian- 
ized, and  adopted  into  the  new  dispensation  ;  was  com- 
memorative of  the  redemption  finished,  as  the  original 
sabbath  was  of  creation  finished  ;  and  was  to  be  observed 
to  the  end  of  the  world  in  the  plenary  sanctity  and  obli- 
gation of  the  Fourth  Commandment,  but  upon  the  first 
day  of  the  week  by  the  same  divine  authority  that  insti- 
tuted it  in  the  beginning.  The  sabbath  therefore,  old  as 
Eden,  unchangeable  as  the  moral  law  of  the  Decalogue, 
re-instituted  on  the  first  day  with  all  the  moral  force  it  had 
on  the  seventh,  by  the  same  divine  and  apostolic  author- 
ity which  established  the  Christian  dispensation,  is  so 
woven  into  the  texture  of  Christianity,  —  indeed,  is  such 
an  integral  and  essential  constituent  of  the  Christian  sys- 
tem, —  that  to  weaken  the  sabbath  is  to  weaken  Christian- 
ity ;  to  disannul  the  sabbath  is  to  disannul  Christianity  ; 
and  to  overthrow  the  sabbath  altogether,  is  altogether  to 
overthrow  the  possibility  of  the  progress  and  triumph  of- 
the  Christian  religion.  The  sabbath  is  the  lungs  by  which 
it  breathes.  Destroy  it,  and  Christianity  dies  of  con- 
sumption.    To  my  thought  the  logic  is  irresistible:  — 

1.  Christianity  is  necessary  to  social  regeneration. 

2.  The  sabbath  is  necessary  to  the  progress  of  Chris- 
tianity. 

3.  Therefore  the  sabbath  is  necessary  to  all  forms  of 
social  regeneration. 


5  2  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

It  was  because  of  this  stark  necessity  that  Christ  perpet- 
uated the  sabbath,  and  explained  the  reason  therefor,  in 
words  which,  though  often  perverted,  are  the  strongest 
possible  ground  for  the  preservation  of  the  day  and  its 
holy  observance  :  "  The  sabbath  uuas  made  for  inan^ 

If  Jehovah  made  the  sabbath  for  man,  it  was  because 
of  some  great  necessity.  Man  is  the  end  in  view,  the 
sabbath  the  means  to  his  welfare.  It  is  a  divine  pro- 
vision to  meet  his  highest  good,  by  the  same  infinite  wis- 
dom and  love  that  provide  food  for  his  body,  air  for  his 
lungs,  light  for  his  eye,  beauty  for  his  taste,  truth  for  his 
mind,  and  atonement  for  his  sins.  It  was  made  for  man 
as  a  moral,  religious,  and  immortal  being.  He  always  was, 
is  now,  and  ever  will  be,  such  a  being  to  the  last  genera- 
tion ;  and  hence  the  sabbath  was,  is  now,  and  ever  will  be, 
a  necessity  to  the  end  of  time.  It  was  made  for  all  men 
and  all  time.  Christ  declares  it  **was  made  for  Man,"  — 
not  for  the  Jew  and  Mosaic  dispensation,  but  for  the  whole 
race  and  for  all  dispensations.  The  Jewish  sabbath  is 
gone ;  but  the  Christian  sabbath  is  here  in  full  force, 
struck  at  and  invaded  by  many,  but  intrenched  in  the 
nature  and  needs  of  man,  in  the  moral  law  of  God,  in  the 
necessity  of  Christianity,  and  in  the  best  interests  of  soci- 
ety ;  and  here  it  will  remain  by  the  fiat  of  God,  and  by 
the  fidelity  of  those  men  whose  hearts  and  heads  God  in- 
spires. Society,  which  is  but  the  aggregation  of  individ- 
uals, can  only  be  regenerated  by  the  same  influences  and 
moral  forces  which  elevate  the  individual.  What  is  ne- 
cessary for  the  moral  transformation  of  the  individual  man 
is  necessary  to  society. 

A   REST-DAY. 

I.  The  sabbath  as  a  rest-day  is  necessary  to  the  highest 
good  of  man  and  society.  The  demand  for  one  day  of 
rest  in  seven  is  imperative  for  the  welfare  of  man.     Those 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  53 


do  the  most  work,  and  best  work,  with  the  most  comfort, 
who  rest  on  the  sabbath.  There  is  not  an  exception  to 
this  rule,  in  mental  or  physical  labor,  the  world  over. 
Manufacturers  see  that  goods  made  on  Monday,  after  a 
day  of  rest,  are  superior  to  those  made  in  weariness  Sat- 
urday. Merchants  in  London,  New  York,  and  Boston, 
have  testified  that  those  men  have  prospered  best,  who 
have  observed  Sunday.  Six  hundred  and  forty  London 
physicians  petitioned  Parliament  for  the  enforcement  of  the  ' 
rest  of  the  sabbath,  or  the  health  of  the  city  could  not  be 
preserved.  It  was  found,  during  our  war  for  the  life  of  the 
nation,  that  those  great  manufactories  which  stopped  on 
the  sabbath  turned  out  more  and  better  war-material, 
with  greater  profit,  than  those  which  worked  the  whole 
seven  days.  Mr.  Bagnall,  the  great  iron-merchant,  de- 
clared that  he  found  by  experience  that  he  manufactured 
more  iron,  and  made  larger  profits,  after  he  ceased  work  on 
the  sabbath,  than  when  he  employed  the  seven  days  of 
each  week.  God  puts  a  premium  upon  the  day  of  rest. 
Fifty-two  sabbaths  in  the  year  count  on  the  right  side  \j 
of  the  balance-sheet.  The  sabbath  is  better  health,  longer  ' 
life,  greater  wealth,  more  equally  distributed,  larger  self- 
respect,  kinder  humanity,  and  juster  application  of  the 
Golden  Rule.  All  these  factors  are  necessary  to  social 
regeneration.  The  celebrated  Count  Montalembert  says 
that  the  superiority  of  the  lower  classes  of  England  to 
those  of  other  nations,  that  the  extraordinary  wealth  and 
supreme  maritime  power  of  England,  "are  clear  proofs  of 
the  blessing  of  God  bestowed  upon  this  nation  for  its  dis- 
tinguished sabbath  observance." 

THE    SABBATH    A    MORAL    DIKE. 

That  portion  of  our  country  which  has  presented  the 
highest  social  condition  is  New  England,  where  the  sab- 
bath has  been  most  sacredly  observed  as  a  holy-day  of 


54  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

rest.  And  any  decadence  of  the  type  of  society  here  has 
been  preceded  by  a  disregard  of  the  sabbath  day.  Better 
far  that  we  return  to  the  Puritan  sabbath  with  all  its  rigors 
and  severity,  than  that  we  plunge  into  the  slough  of  the 
unrestful,  revelrous,  immoral,  Continental  sabbath !  Un- 
less we  want  American  society  to  become  the  counterpart 
of  European  society  in  volcanic  unrest,  in  social  incendia- 
rism, in  immoral  corruptness,  and  in  irreligious  feculence, 
we  must  dike  society  with  the  rest  and  hallowedness  of 
the  sabbath,  against  the  inundations  of  foreign  and  domes- 
tic degeneracy.  The  sabbath  is  the  Gibraltar  of  social 
security.  Break  down  the  sabbath,  and  you  break  down 
the  levees  that  prevent  a  Mississippi  flood  of  evils  from 
devastating  the  peace  and  prosperity  of  society.  The 
workingman  who  assists  in  lowering  or  desecrating  the 
day  of  rest  is  forging  the  chain  of  conscienceless  rapacity 
with  which  in  the  future  he  may  be  hopelessly  bound. 
And  the  employer  who  through  carelessness  or  cupidity 
winks  at  its  violation  is  breaking  the  great  moral  bond 
that  holds  his  employees  to  serve  him  in  honesty  and 
fidelity.  Nay,  he  has  sapped  the  moral  foundation  upon 
which  his  permanent  prosperity  rests. 

A  startling  statistic  of  the  destructive  tendency  of  sab- 
bath disregard,  in  a  body  of  men  the  most  necessary  to 
the  peace  and  security  of  society  of  any  class  in  the  com- 
munity, is  found  in  the  official  records  of  the  London 
police.  Of  the  5,000  policemen  of  that  city,  in  one  year, 
921  were  dismissed,  523  were  suspended,  and  2,492  were 
fined  for  misdemeanors  ;  leaving  only  1,066  of  the  5,000, 
who  were  faithful  to  their  trust.  Now,  if  the  moral  depres- 
sion of  disregard  of  the  sabbath  be  so  fearful  on  the  class 
most  indispensable  to  civic  good  order,  what  must  be  its 
degenerating  influence  upon  those  who  violate  the  day  of 
rest  without  excuse  or  palliation } 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE,  55 


A    DARK    PICTURE. 

Abolish  the  day  of  rest  in  imagination,  and  look  on  the 
picture.  The  shops  all  open,  the  stores  all  active,  the 
manufactories  all  driving,  the  banks  all  busy,  the  mills  all 
running,  and  the  business  thoroughfares  all  crowded  and 
pushing.  Tired  men  and  weary  women,  unrested  by  a 
sabbath,  dragging  themselves  to  their  ceaseless  grinding 
work,  and  little  children  sighing  under  their  unremitting 
tasks.  Possibly  a  gasp  at  pleasure  in  the  afternoon,  and 
a  visit  to  some  stifling,  demoralizing  place  of  amusement 
at  night.  Everywhere  weariness,  disheartenment,  feverish- 
ness,  —  conditions  inviting  to  dissipation  and  debauchery. 
Tell  me  if  out  of  such  a  state  of  things  social  regenera- 
tion be  possible  or  even  thinkable  t  Such  is  the  actual 
condition  of  society,  just  so  far  forth  as  the  Christian  sab- 
bath is  lowered  or  disregarded.  Upon  this  putting  of  the 
case  we  predicate  an  unanswerable  argument  for  a  sabbath 
of  rest  as  a  necessity  to  social  regeneration. 

A    RELIGIOUS    DAY. 

II.  The  sabbath  is  necessary  to  social  regeneration  as  a 
religious  day.  The  command  to  keep  the  sabbath  day 
holy  is  not  an  arbitrary  command,  but  an  injunction 
grounded  in  man's  moral  needs.  Separating  the  day  from 
all  Jewish  ritualism,  all  Puritanic  severity,  all  extremes  of 
fasting  or  feasting,  gloom  or  gala-day,  asceticism  or  dissi- 
pation, let  us  indicate  its  rational  religious  observance. 

Man,  as  a  religious  being,  owes  one  day  in  seven  to 
religious  devotion  and  the  worship  of  God.  The  Chris- 
tian observance  of  the  day  as  a  holy-day  (i)  prohibits  all 
labor  not  required  by  necessity  or  mercy.  This  is  true  of 
physical  and  mental  labor,  and  is  grounded  in  man's  con- 
stitution, as  previously  argued.  (2)  It  prohibits  all  amuse- 
ment and   recreation  violative   of   keeping  the  day  holy. 


S6  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

Any  abuse  of  the  sabbath  to  godless  amusement  and  dis- 
sipation is  more  injurious  to  the  moi'al  tone  of  society 
than  the  perversion  of  the  day  to  secular  business. 

To  keep  the  sabbath  holy  as  a  religious  day,  requires 
the  employment  of  a  part  of  the  time  (i)  in  specific  acts 
of  private  religious  duty.  Among  these  may  be  empha- 
sized, the  study  of  the  Bible,  prayer,  and  devout  medita- 
tion. (2)  In  family  religion.  The  word  of  God  puts 
prayerless  families  and  heathenism  in  the  same  category 
(Jer.  *x.  25).  (3)  In  the  public  worship  of  God.  In  re- 
generate society  God  is  adored  and  worshipped  and  suppli- 
cated. In  degenerate  society  he  is  forgotten,  despised, 
and  blasphemed. 

When  the  sabbath  is  kept  holy  in  private,  family,  and 
public  worship,  it  fulfils  the  felicitous  words  of  good  Philip 
Henry,  "  If  this  is  not  heaven  upon  earth,  surely  it  is  the 
road  to  a  heaven  above."  Such  a  Christian  sabbath  is 
necessary  to  social  regeneration.  In  countries  where  this 
most  perfectly  obtains,  like  England,  Scotland,  and  New 
England,  society  is  found  in  its  highest  moral  tone.  In 
countries  where  the  sabbath  is  most  profaned,  like  France, 
Spain,  Italy,  and  Bavaria,  society  is  most  grossly  immoral. 
Cause  and  effect  are  unmistakably  clear  in  these  facts. 

A    MORAL    FORCE. 

Social  regeneration  cannot  be  divorced  from  the  highest 
moral  forces.  The  regeneration  of  society  is  a  moral  act 
of  moral  causes.  The  sabbath  is  one  of  the  chief  moral 
forces  operating  on  society.  Therefore  the  sabbath  is  a 
necessary  factor  in  the  regeneration  of  society. 

An  eminent  judge  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court 
forcibly  said,  **  Where  there  is  no  Christian  sabbath  there 
is  no  Christian  morality ;  and  without  this  free  govern- 
ment cannot  long  be  maintained." 

Blackstone,  whose  competence  to  form  a  judicial  opinion 


THE  SABBA  TH  IN  NA  TURE.  5  7 


in  the  premises,  is  undisputed,  covers  the  relation  of  the 
sabbath  to  social  regeneration  in  these  emphatic  words  : 
**  The  keeping  one  day  in  seven  holy,  as  a  time  of  relaxa- 
tion and  refreshment,  as  well  as  for  public  worship,  is  of 
admirable  service  to  the  state,  considered  merely  as  a  civil 
institution.  It  humanizes,  by  the  help  of  conversation 
and  society,  the  manners  of  the  lower  classes,  which  would 
otherwise  degenerate  into  a  sordid  ferocity  and  savage  self- 
ishness of  spirit ;  it  enables  the  industrious  workingman 
to  pursue  his  occupation  in  the  ensuing  week  with  health 
and  cheerfulness ;  it  imprints  on  the  minds  of  the  people 
that  sense  of  their  duty  to  God  so  necessary  to  make  them 
good  citizens,  but  which  yet  would  be  worn  out  and  de- 
faced by  an  unremitted  continuance  of  labor,  without  any 
stated  times  of  recalling  them  to  the  worship  of  their 
Maker." 

HARD    FACTS. 

The  operation  of  the  Golden  Rule  without  which,  in  its 
approximate  exercise,  there  can  be  no  regenerate  society, 
demands  the  sabbath  to  enforce  and  re-enforce  its  recipro- 
cal duties.  And  only  so  far  forth  as  men  love  their  neigh- 
bors as  themselves,  does  society  give  evidence  of  moral 
regeneration.  Now,  wherever  society  desecrates  the  sab- 
bath by  labor  or  amusement,  the  moral  and  regenerating 
forces  are  always  below  mediocrity.  Pick  out  the  hamlets 
or  cities,  or  wards  of  cities,  where  there  are  the  lowest 
moral  conditions,  and  there  just  in  proportion  the  sabbath 
is  desecrated  and  ignored.  Contrariwise,  select  the  most 
elevated,  moral  hamlets,  cities,  and  wards  of  cities,  and 
there  the  sabbath  is  most  sacredly  observed.  Morality 
and  sabbath-keeping  walk  hand  in  hand  in  inseparable 
affinity.  God  has  joined  them  in  eternal  wedlock,  and 
accursed  be  the  hand  that  would  put  them  asunder !  Go 
to  Mexico,  South  America,  and  Europe,  where  the  sabbath 


58  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

is  profaned  by  ordinary  labor,  elections,  beer-gardens, 
Tivolis,  open  dancing,  theatres,  bull-fights,  and  universal 
carousal,  and  there  morality  is  at  its  lowest  degree  among 
civilized  nations.  Immorality,  degradation,  and  debauch- 
ery are  dissolving  the  foundations  of  society.  Man  sinks 
his  honor,  woman  her  purity,  and  childhood  its  innocence. 
Poverty,  ignorance,  disorder,  and  crime  blight  and  curse 
society.  A  standing  army  alone  prevents  a  suppressed 
Pandemonium  breaking  forth  in  its  horrible  ghastly  atro- 
cities. The  blood-curdling  horrors  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion sample  the  dreadful  state  of  society  wherever  the 
sabbath  is  abolished  and  religion  dethroned.  One  such 
example  is  enough  to  send  a  shudder  of  horror  through 
ten  thousand  years  to  come !  And  there  is  no  middle 
ground  on  this  question,  between  keeping  the  sabbath 
holy  unto  God,  and  its  utter  licentiousness.  Compromise 
is  treason.  Surrender  is  cowardice.  To  fight  for  the 
right  is  heroism.  Compromise  with  slavery,  or  intemper- 
ance, or  infidelity,  or  any  moral  wrong,  never  benefited 
mankind.  It  is  odious  in  the  sight  of  God,  and  entails  a 
blistering  curse  on  society.  We  shall  never  regenerate 
society,  divorced  from  the  moral  and  religious  plan  of 
Jehovah.  And  the  sooner  we  wheel  into  line  under  his 
banner,  and  march  in  defence  of  the  Christian  sabbath,  the 
better  evidence  we  shall  give  of  our  faith,  and  of  our  intel- 
ligent zeal  to  regenerate  society. 

HOLY-DAY,    OR   HOLIDAY. 

Another  argument  for  the  preservation  of  the  sabbath 
is  furnished  in  the  character  of  the  substitute  for  the 
sacred  day.  If  it  is  not  sacredly  observed  as  a  holy-day, 
it  becomes  a  godless  holiday.  That  means  an  archangel 
fallen  and  become  a  fiend.  It  is  a  settled  fact  that  men 
will  not  work  seven  days  in  the  week  regularly.  Nature 
compels  a  halt.     They  must  rest.     How  shall  they  use  the 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  59 

rest-day  ?  If  not  as  the  Christian  sabbath,  holy  unto  God, 
then  as  a  carnal,  irreligious  day.  I  hesitate  not  to  affirm 
that  the  Sunday  of  Paris  and  Venice  and  Madrid,  and  the 
Sunday  which  the  enemies  of  the  Christian  sabbath  would 
force  on  America,  is  the  wickedest  day  of  the  week.  While 
the  Christian  sabbath  is  the  great  instrument  of  social 
regeneration,  the  godless  Sunday  that  is  crowding  out 
God's  holy-day  is  a  tremendous  engine  of  social  degener- 
ation. When  men  do  not  sacredly  keep  the  day  they  sac- 
rilegiously abuse  it.  Hence,  relaxed  from  the  restraints 
of  the  toil  of  the  week,  they  make  Sunday  a  carnival  of 
sin  and  crime.  More  oaths  hiss  in  the  ear  of  God  on  his 
holy-day,  more  drinking  and  drunkenness  keep  up  the 
orgies  of  hell,  more  foul  immoralities  rot  into  society, 
more  revelry  and  carousal  and  fighting  debase  mankind, 
more  crime  riots,  and  more  murders  redden  the  earth  with 
blood  on  Sunday,  where  the  sabbath  is  disregarded,  than  in 
any  other  day,  not  to  say  all  the  days,  of  the  week.  Strike 
the  Fourth  Commandment  out  of  the  Decalogue,  and  men 
will  trample  every  other  command  under  their  feet.  It  is 
the  key-stone  in  the  arch  of  the  Christian  religion.  If  we 
allow  men  to  strike  that  down,  the  whole  fabric  of  Chris- 
tianity will  become  a  heap  of  ruins.  For  without  the  sab- 
bath, religion  will  disappear,  and  with  that  will  perish  the 
hope  of  social  regeneration.  This  is  no  idle  statement 
that 

CHRISTIANITY    SURVIVES    OR   PERISHES 

with  the  Christian  sabbath.  The  Continental  sabbath  is 
proof  of  this.  The  decided  profanation  of  the  day  there 
is  attended  by  a  hollow  farce  of  religion.  In  Italy,  Spain, 
and  France,  but  few  men  attend  the  churches.  Vital  piety 
among  them  is  the  exception.  The  women  are  more  under 
the  sway  of  the  priesthood.  Pure  morals,  the  proof  of 
genuine  piety,  are  deplorably  lacking  in  both  sexes.     The 


6o  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

sabbath  is  not  a  religious  day ;  and  Christianity  there  is 
but  the  shadow,  or  echo  rather,  of  a  rehgion  born  at  Pen- 
tecost. Society  degenerates  as  Christianity  is  corrupted, 
and  Christianity  is  vitiated  as  the  sabbath  is  perverted.  I 
repeat  it,  the  Christian  religion  and  the  Christian  sabbath 
stand  or  fall  together ;  and  the  regeneration  or  degenera- 
tion of  society  follows,  as  the  holy-day  survives  or  perishes. 
The  positive  side  of  this  argument  is  no  less  effective. 

At  least  nine-tenths  of  all  the  Christian  work  of  Ameri- 
ca is  done  on  the  sabbath.  Overthrow  the  sabbath,  and 
you  strike  down  all  work  in  our  hospitals  and  prisons. 
Overthrow  the  sabbath,  and  you  overturn  a  million  family- 
altars  with  their  conserving  mighty  influence  on  the  homes. 
Overthrow  the  sabbath,  and  you  paralyze  at  a  stroke 
seventy-five  thousand  Sunday  schools,  stop  the  work  of 
eight  hundred  thousand  officers  and  teachers,  and  orphan 
seven  million  of  the  youth  of  our  land  6i  their  chief  reli- 
gious instruction.  You  turn  these  lambs  loose  among 
wolves.  Overthrow  the  sabbath,  and  you  dry  up  the  foun- 
tain of  the  great  charities  of  society.  Overthrow  the 
sabbath,  and  you  silence  sixty  thousand  pulpits,  the  tre- 
mendous artillery  which  God  has  planted  to  bombard  the 
fortresses  of  wickedness  and  immorality  ;  you  silence  sixty 
thousand  trumpets  calling  sinners  to  repentance,  and  in- 
spiring the  hosts  of  Israel  in  gospelling  the  world  for 
Christ.  Overthrow  the  sabbath,  and  you  poison  the  foun- 
tains of  public  and  private  virtue ;  you  break  down  the 
banks  which  protect  society  in  its  morals,  and  bring  in  an 
inundation  of  drunkenness,  licentiousness,  and  irreligion. 
Overthrow  the  sabbath,  and  you  undermine  the  moral 
foundations  of  all  that  makes  society  peaceful,  prosperous, 
and  virtuous.  Is  not  the  sabbath,  therefore,  the  stark 
necessity  of  social  regeneration }  With  the  sabbath  gone, 
there  is  no  hope  for  society.  We  must,  we  will,  defend  the 
charter  of  our  hopes. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  6 1 


A    BLOW   AT   RELIGION. 

It  is  the  old  battle  against  Christianity  renewed.  The 
enemy  hardly  conceal  their  ultimate  purpose.  Their  objec- 
tive point  in  overthrowing  the  Christian  sabbath  is  the 
inevitable  destruction  of  evangelical  religion  itself.  Some 
avow  this,  • — all  are  contributing  to  this  end.  Purposely 
or  blindly  they  are  sapping  and  mining  the  cross  of  Christ. 

The  two  hundred  thousand  saloons  and  beer-gardens  of 
the  land,  that  clamor  for  the  overthrow  of  the  sabbath ; 
the  liberal  leagues,  that  demand  the  abolition  of  the  sab- 
bath so  that  every  man  may  do  as  he  pleases  on  the  Lord's 
Day,  and  that  insist  upon  the  privilege  of  spreading  broad- 
cast the  vilest  obscene  literature ;  the  free-lovers,  that  hate 
the  marriage-laws  ;  the  free-thinkers,  that  hiss  at  our  holy 
religion ;  the  Ingersolls,  that  spit  their  venom  on  the 
Bible  that  they  may  pocket  twenty  thousand  dollars  a 
year  of  blasphemous  money ;  the  communists,  that  would 
wrap  our  cities  in  conflagration  while  they  riot  and  pillage  ; 
and. the  more  respectable  liberalists  who  are  mere  camp- 
sutlers  to  the  bolder  legions  of  the  army  of  sabbath-van- 
dals,—  are  the  common  enemies  of  the  Christian  sabbath, 
the  Christian  church,  and  the  Christian  religion.  And  in 
this  they  are  the  enemies  of  social  regeneration.  The 
sabbath-lovers  are  the  loyalists  to  God  and  humanity,  like 
the  Union  army  fighting  for  the  life  of  the  nation,  and  the 
starry  symbol  of  our  national  glory. 

NO   SURRENDER. 

With  the  whole  of  the  Lord's  Day  we  must  stand  or  fall. 
In  the  West —  notably  Chicago  —  there  is  a  pusillanimous 
spirit  to  compromise  on  a  part  of  the  sabbath.  That  is 
treason.  If  the  day  is  at  all  holy  time,  it  is  all  holy  time. 
Compromise  to-day  of  half  the  sabbath  means  the  capture 
of  the  whole  to-morrow.     Half  a  sabbath  is  scarcely  worth 


62  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

fighting  for.  *' A  half-loaf  of  good  may  seem  superficially 
better  than  none  at  all ;  but  a  loaf,  one-half  of  which  is 
mixed  with  arsenic,  is  worse  than  going  hungry."  It  is 
cowardly  to  sit  in  sackcloth  and  ashes  before  the  enemies 
of  the  sabbath.  The  war-drums  of  the  foe  are  beating, 
their  bugles  are  sounding  a  charge.  They  are  marching 
upon  us.  Nay,  they  have  already  assaulted  the  citadel  of 
the  sacred  day.  '*We  must  fight!  I  repeat  it,  sir,  we 
must  fight."  But  the  only  way  we  can  defend  the  citadel 
is  to  fight  for  the  zvhole  of  it.  *'  Hold  the  fort !  "  are  our 
Divine  orders.  Would  that  the  answer  from  all  Christians 
and  good  citizens  might  reverberate  in  thunder-tones  over 
the  land,  and  echo  to  the  throne  of  God,  "  By  thy  grace 
we  will ! " 

A    FOREIGN    WAR. 

We  are  trying  to  maintain  this  Christian  nation  which 
our  fathers  founded  and  bequeathed  to  us.  We  welcome 
all  transatlantic  comers  who  propose  to  assimilate  with  us 
as  American  citizens,  and  to  perpetuate  our  Christian  re- 
publican institutions  unimpaired.  But,  if  Europeans  pro- 
pose to  Europeanize  America,  we  intend  to  meet  them 
with  the  counter  declaration,  that  America  proposes  to 
Americanize  Europeans.  It  is  the  height  of  impudence 
for  men  who  have  here  found  asylum  from  their  home 
wrongs  and  hardships,  before  they  get  the  brogue  off  their 
tongues  to  strike  at  our  most  sacred  institutions.  Lib- 
erty here  does  not  guarantee  license. 

American  asylum  to  foreigners  does  not  mean  social 
incendiarism  and  sabbatic  disorder.  If  they  do  not  admire 
our  sabbath  and  Christian  institutions  ;  if  they  prefer  a 
Continental  sabbath  of  unrestricted  license,  a  go-as-you- 
please  sabbath,  they  are  welcome  to  enjoy  it  —  by  re-cross- 
ing the  Atlantic  —  as  soon  as  they  choose,  and  that  too 
with  our  warmest  benedictions !      But  if   they  stay  here 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  6^ 

they  must  cease  the  attempt  to  rob  us  of  the  holy  sabbath. 
The  claim  that  Sunday  laws  are  an  interference  with  the 
personal  liberty  of  a  portion  of  our  citizens  is  fallacious. 
Insisting  that  the  Fourth  Commandment  is  a  part  of  the 
moral  law  of  God,  and  as  necessary  to  the  moral  welfare  of 
society  as  the  sixth,  or  seventh,  or  eighth,  it  follows  that 
Sunday  laws  are  no  more  an  infringement  of  personal  lib- 
erty than  the  State  laws  against  murder,  adultery,  and 
stealing.  And  the  only  classes  which  inveigh  against 
Sunday  laws  and  the  laws  of  social  order  are  those  who 
lust  for  the  license  to  break  the  laws  of  God  and  society. 
And  against  all  such  men  and  their  schemes  we  must  edu- 
cate and  tone  up  the  public  conscience.  The  Christian 
sabbath  is  a  tree  of  life.  It  shelters  our  civil  and  reli- 
gious liberties.  Its  branches  are  loaded  with  peace,  purity, 
prosperity,  temperance,  health,  morality,  and  religion.  Its 
leaves  are  for  the  healing  of  the  nation.  It  was  God's 
good  gift  to  our  fathers.  The  heritage  of  their  children 
smiles  beneath  its  dews  of  life.  We  will  never  submit  to 
see  the  axe  laid  at  its  root.  Blending  the  tones  of  expos- 
tulation and  authority,  the  voice  of  America  cries,  — 

"  Woodman  !  spare  that  tree  ! 
Touch  not  a  single  bough  ! 
In  youth  it  sheltered  me, 
And  I'll  protect  it  now  !  " 


64  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


THE   SABBATH   AND   THE   FAMILY. 

BY   REV.    HENRY   M.    KING,    D.D.,    OF    BOSTON. 

In  "The  Princeton  Review"  for  September,  1879,  there 
is  a  valuable  article  by  Rev.  Dr.  Schaff  upon  '*  The  Prog- 
ress of  Christianity  in  the  United  States  of  America." 
The  author  having  quoted  the  profound  remark  of  De 
Tocqueville,  that  '*  Despotism  may  govern  without  faith, 
but  liberty  cannot,"  continues:  "God's  Church,  God's 
Book,  and  God's  Day  are  the  three  pillars  of  American 
society.  Without  them  it  must  go  the  way  of  all  flesh, 
and  God  will  raise  up  some  other  nation  or  continent  to 
carry  on  his  designs ;  but  with  them  it  will  continue  to 
prosper  notwithstanding  all  hinderances  from  without  and 
within."  This  statement  is  worthy  of  emphatic  and  per- 
petual repetition,  yet  the  figure  may  be  chargeable  with 
incompleteness.  Four  pillars  instead  of  three  are  needed 
to  bear  up  steadily  and  securely  the  great  weight  of  a 
pure  social  system,  so  that  no  corner  shall  be  without 
its  adequate  support ;  and  that  fourth  pillar  is  the  family, 
which  is  also  a  divine  institution,  older  than  the  others, 
and  inseparably  connected  with  them,  appointed  to  minis- 
ter untold  earthly  blessing  to  man,  and  to  be  preserved  as 
the  type  of  all  heavenly  good. 

It  is  often  said  that  there  is  an  interdependence  and 
correlation  of  Christian  doctrines,  that  the  system  of  re- 
vealed truth  is  a  unit,  that  one  doctrine  rightly  appre- 
hended suggests  and  demands  the  others,  so  that  some 
theological  Cuvier  could,  from  any  part  of  this  harmoni- 
ous system,  reconstruct  the  whole.  It  is  not  unreasonable 
to  suppose    that  this  is   true,  and  that  the  doctrines  of 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  65 

Christianity  in  this  divine   scheme  of   grace   are  put  for 
each  other's  defence  and  support. 

It  is  no  less  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  institutions 
of  religion  are  interdependent  and  correlated,  that  they 
not  only  give  their  united  strength  to  the  support  and 
advancement  of  the  gospel  of  Christ,  and  the  elevation  of 
social  life,  but  that  they  depend  upon  and  support  each 
other.  The  strength  of  each  is  imparted  to  all.  The  neg- 
lect of  one  is  followed  by  damage  and  disaster  to  all. 
They  are  strands  of  a  beautiful  cord,  links  of  a  perfect 
chain,  parts  of  a  divine  whole.  God's  Word  would  lose 
half  its  power,  were  there  no  church  in  which  its  truths 
are  enshrined  and  illustrated,  and  no  day  sacredly  set 
apart  for  the  acquisition  of  its  heavenly  knowledge,  and 
no  family  with  its  parental  authority  and  responsibility  and 
its  filial  trust  and  obedience,  in  which  may  be  inculcated 
an  early  reverence  and  tender  regard  for  divine  things. 
God's  Church  lives  and  thrives  only  as  it  is  nourished  by 
a  divine  and  authoritative  revelation,  and  receives  the 
support  of  a  day  regularly  consecrated  to  its  service  and 
worship,  and  is  held  in  sacred  and  loving  connection  with 
the  home,  which  is  its  type  and  image.  The  Lord's  Day 
will  not  long  maintain  its  existence,  unless  its  observance 
is  seen  to  be  based  not  simply  upon  the  physical  and  tem- 
poral need-s  of  men,  but  upon  the  divine  authority  of  the 
Word  of  God,  and  unless  there  is  the  church  which  shall 
sacredly  and  conscientiously  keep  it,  and  the  family  which 
shall  hail  its  holy  hours  with  delight,  and  gather  from 
their  sunshine  spiritual  health  and  beauty.  So  the  family, 
which  as  we  find  it  in  Christian  lands  is  one  of  their 
fairest  and  most  fragrant  flowers,  would  fade  and  decay, 
without  God's  Word  to  give  it  life,  and  God's  Church  to 
overshadow  and  protect  it,  and  God's  Day  to  sanctify  and 
sweeten  it.  If  one  strand  is  snapped,  the  cord  is  by  so 
much  weakened.     If  one  link  is  broken,  the  strength  of 


66  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

the  chain  is  gone.  These  are  the  four  mutually  support- 
ing and  all-sufficient  pillars,  on  which  rest  the  purity, 
peace,  and  perpetuity  of  American  society. 

History  tells  us  what  changes  the  introduction  of  Chris- 
tianity, with  its  beneficent  institutions  and  its  teachings  of 
love  and  equality,  produced  in  the  social  and  domestic  life 
of  the  heathen  world.  Family !  How  wonderful  is  the 
transformation  which  Christianity  has  wrought  in  the 
meaning  of  that  word !  Familia,  the  old  heathen  Latin 
word,  denoted  simply  a  retinue  of  slaves,  bound  together 
by  no  affection  or  natural  ties,  but  only  by  a  cruel,  des- 
potic will  and  slavish  fear.  But  Christianity  has  filled  it 
with  a  meaning  expressive  of  the  most  tender  relations 
and  the  most  sacred  emotions.  It  breathed  upon  the  mar- 
riage relation  and  the  domestic  life;  and  where  before  was 
the  miasmatic  bog  of  an  unspeakable  corruption,  there 
appeared  a  garden  of  virtue  and  holy  affection.  It  ele- 
vated and  ennobled  the  position  and  life  of  woman  ;  it 
developed  the  sense  of  parental  responsibility  ;  it  threw 
off  the  chains  of  gross  passion  and  political  expediency, 
and  wove  instead  the  strong,  unchafing  bands  of  domestic 
love  and  fidelity ;  out  of  the  coarse  and  uncomely  mate- 
rials which  it  everywhere  found,  it  constructed  the  purity 
and  the  comeliness  of  the  Christian  home.  Schmidt^  thus 
describes  the  condition  of  woman  and  the  nature  of 
the  marriage  relation  in  heathen  society:  ''Woman  was 
treated  all  her  life  as  a  minor:  if  married,  the  husband 
was  her  tutor  or  master,  as  the  law  defined  it."  ''Ac- 
cording to  the  opinion  of  philosophers  and  legislators, 
marriage  was  not  a  union  of  hearts  :  it  was  only  a  union 
formed  in  the  interests  of  the  State  to  perpetuate  it.  It 
had  no  moral  importance  to  the  persons  contracting  it. 
It  was  only  a  political  institution  designed  to  give  citizens 

1  Essai  historique  sur  la  Soci6te  civile  dans  le  Monde  Romain,  et  sur  sa  Transfor- 
mation par  le  Christianisme,  pp.  28,  206. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  6/ 

to  the  country."  Against  these  prevalent  views  Chris- 
tianity brought  to  bear  the  full  force  of  its  higher  and 
more  spiritual  teachings,  viz.,  that  "  marriage  with  one 
wife,  instituted  by  God  himself  when  he  created  the  first 
pair,  ...  is  a  union  of  souls  .  .  .  designed  to  glorify  God 
and  to  last  beyond  this  life.  It  is  a  mystery,  for  it  is  the 
type  of  the  union  of  Jesus  Christ  with  his  Church.  Thus 
sanctified  it  becomes  a  school  of  virtues  and  of  duties 
between  the  married,  for  their  own  education,  as  for  that 
of  their  children,  unto  life  eternal.  Each  home,  each 
family,  ought  to  be  an  image  of  the  Church  ;  for,  where 
two  or  three  are  gathered  together  in  the  name  of  Jesus 
Christ,  he  is  present  in  the  midst  of  them."  When  and 
where  these  teachings  have  prevailed,  the  Christian  home, 
with  its  hallowed  life  and  its  divine  mission,  has  become 
a  realized  fact,  on  which  the  Church  has  built  its  largest 
hopes  of  ultimate  triumph,  and  in  which  society  finds 
its  securest  basis  ;  "  the  corner-stone  of  the  temple,  and 
the  foundation-stone  of  the  city." 

Says  Canon  Farrar :  "  For  families  in  which,  like  shel- 
tered flowers,  spring  up  all  that  is  purest  and  sweetest  in 
human  lives  ;  for  marriage  exalted  to  an  almost  sacra- 
mental dignity ;  for  all  that  circle  of  heavenly  blessings 
which  result  from  a  common  self-sacrifice  ;  for  that  beauti- 
ful unison  of  noble  manhood,  stainless  womanhood,  joyous 
infancy,  and  uncontaminated  youth  ;  in  one  word,  for  all 
that  there  is  of  divinity  and  sweetness  in  the  one  word 
Home:  for  this  —  to  an  extent  which  we  can  hardly  realize 
—  we  are  indebted  to  Christianity  alone."  ^ 

Now,  then,  what  Christianity  has  founded  and  estab- 
lished as  part  indeed  of  its  own  organic  life,  Christianity 
by  the  combined  force  of  its  teachings  and  its  institutions 
must  preserve,  if  it  is  to  be  preserved  at  all.  Here  again 
history  has  its  impressive  lessons  for  us.     In  the  dark  days 

1  Witness  of  History  to  Christ,  p.  183. 


68  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

of  the  French  Revolution,  "the  shabbiest  page  of  human 
annals"  as  Carlyle  calls  it,  when  **  Catholicism  was  burned 
out,  and  Reason-worship  guillotined,"  when  God  and  his 
word  were  blasphemously  ignored,  and  religion  and  its 
holy  rites  and  institutions  were  trampled  in  the  dust,  when 
the  Lord's  Day  was  blotted  out  of  the  calendar,  and  a 
tenth  day  of  rest  was  substituted  without  divine  sanction 
of  sacredness,  then  it  was  found  that  the  destruction  was 
most  complete,  that  the  very  safeguards  of  domestic  virtue 
and  peace  had  been  overthrown,  and  that  the  home,  that 
inner  sanctuary  of  purity  and  holy  affection,  that  school 
of  good  morals  and  of  refinement,  that  shrine  of  whatever 
is  tenderest  in  sympathy,  noblest  in  self-sacrifice,  and  most 
sacred  in  joy,  was  involved  in  the  common  ruin. 

Says  Gilfillan,^  "The  National  Convention  enacted  a  law 
permitting  divorce,  of  which  there  were  registered,  within 
about  a  year  and  a  half,  twenty  thousand  cases ;  and 
within  three  months,  five  hundred  and  sixty-two  cases,  or 
one  to  every  three  marriages,  in  Paris  alone.  Well  might 
the  Abbe  Gregoire  exclaim,  '  This  law  will  soon  ruin  the 
nation.'  "  Moreover  it  is  said  that  at  that  time,  in  the 
general  and  wicked  repudiation  of  parental  obligations, 
"infancy  was  committed  to  the  tender  mercies  of  State 
nurseries,  in  which  nine  out  of  ten  children  died."^  A 
contemporaneous  French  writer  acknowledged,  "  The  do- 
mestic virtues  are  extinct."  "  Domestic  crimes,  parricides, 
the  murder  of  husbands  by  their  wives,  and  wives  by 
their  husbands,  are  almost  as  common  as  larcenies  were 
wont  to  be."^  And  subsequently  when  an  attempt  was 
made  in  that  country  to  save  the  Lord's  Day  from  its 
prevalent  profanation,  a  member  of  the  French  Institute 
wrote:  "Whenever  a  nation  fails  to  keep  this  command- 
ment [respecting  the  Sabbath],  Christianity  ceases  to  exist. 

1  The  Sabbath,  p.  232.  2  Beecher's  Perils  of  Atheism,  p.  86. 

8  Boyle  Lectures  for  1821,  by  Harness,  vol.  ii.  p.  no. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE,  69 

There  would  then  be  an  end  to  domestic  Hfe,  to  family 
ties ;  and  civilization  would  soon  be  succeeded  by  barbar- 
ism." ^  In  Spain,  where  the  Sabbath  as  a  holy  day  is  vir- 
tually abolished  and  is  given  over  to  amusements, — the 
theatre  and  the  bull-fight,  —  the  record  of  licentiousness 
and  infanticide  is  no  less  dark  and  repulsive.  Wherever 
in  nominally  Christian  countries  the  Lord's  Day  has  been 
neglected  and  profaned,  the  family  has  deteriorated  ;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  better  observance  of  the  Christian 
Sabbath,  as  seen  in  certain  periods  of  English  and  Scottish 
history  and  in  the  annals  of  Puritan  New  England,  has 
been  uniformly  attended  by  a  marked  prevalence  of  do- 
mestic virtue  and  a  distinguishing  purity  of  social  life. 

History  repeats  itself  in  its  worse  as  well  as  in  its  better 
aspects.  The  secularization  of  the  Sabbath,  which  is  one 
form  of  the  abandonment  of  religion  and  of  forgetfulness 
of  God,  will  inevitably  result  in  expelling  the  sanctity 
from  the  home-life,  in  letting  down  the  standard  of  do- 
mestic morals,  in  opening  into  the  family  the  flood-gate  of 
worldliness  and  crime,  and  will  imperil  the  very  existence 
of  that  which,  with  our  schools  and  our  churches,  has  been 
our  strength  and  our  boast,  —  the  influence  of  the  Chris- 
tian homes  of  New  England.  The  Sabbath  stands  as  the 
guardian  and  protector  of  the  family,  with  its  hallowed 
associations  and  its  blessed  trusts,  the  faithful  watchman 
who  returns  upon  his  regular  beat  to  insure  the  safety  of 
the  home,  and  to  cry  ''All  is  well."  The  family,  no  less 
than  the  Church  of  Christ,  needs  the  Sabbath  to  purify 
and  sweeten  the  tone  of  its  daily  life,  to  cultivate  and 
strengthen  those  domestic  virtues  and  graces  without 
which  the  home  is  but  an  empty  name,  and  to  give  time 
for  the  recognition  and  fulfilment  of  those  higher  religious 
duties  and  obligations,  in  the  absence  of  which  the  home 
fails  to  accomplish  its  divine  mission  as  an  educator  and 

1  See  The  Sabbath,  by  Gilfillan,  p.  231. 


70  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

heavenly  type.  He  who  attempts  to  undermine  the  Sab- 
bath, as  a  holy  day  to  be  religiously  observed,  lays  his 
hand  sacrilegiously  upon  the  altar  of  home.  He  who 
cries,  "Down  with  the  Sabbath,"  cries  with  the  same 
blasphemous  breath,  "  Down  with  the  family  !  " 

On  some  beautiful  autumn  Sunday,  when  the  great 
wheels  of  busy  life  are  silent,  when  the  air  is  filled  with 
a  soft  inspiration,  and  the  blue  heavens  look  down  in 
loving  benediction,  and  every  tree  and  bush  looks  as  if  it 
stood  upon  the  mount  of  transfiguration,  it  may  be  mere 
sentiment  to  say  then,  that  Nature  has  on  its  Sunday 
dress.  Nature  always  preaches,  always  worships,  always 
is  clad  in  Sunday  robe,  to  him  who  does  not  look  upon  it 
with  worldly  eyes  and  secularize  it  with  his  worldly  heart. 
To  him  who  does,  the  first  day  of  the  week  can  be  no  dif- 
ferent from  the  other  six,  and  has  no  added  glory  for  the 
blind  and  the  unspiritual  man,  whose  only  confession  must 
be, — 

"  E'en  Sunday  shines  no  Sabbath  day  to  me." 

But  it  is  no  mere  sentiment,  when  the  family,  one  day  in 
seven,  brushes  off  the  dust  of  the  toil  of  life,  and  lays  aside 
its  working  garb,  and,  with  clean  and  restful  hands,  dons 
its  better  suit,  to  say  it  has  on  its  Sunday  dress.  This 
may  be  the  least  benefit  of  the  Sabbath  to  the  home.  But 
whatever  breaks  in  upon  the  dull  monotony  of  life,  brings 
unwonted  order,  cleanliness,  and  brightness  to  the  dwell- 
ing, rescues  its  inmates  for  a  little  time  from  the  common 
manual  drudgery  on  which  they  depend  for  daily  bread, 
breathes  a  spirit  of  rest  within  the  walls,  lifts  off  the  load 
of  care,  attires  the  family  in  the  best  it  has,  as  if  in  antici- 
pation of  some  honored  guest,  compels  the  body  to  quiet, 
and  stimulates  the  mind  to  activity,  —  whatever  does  all  this 
cannot  but  elevate  and  bless  the  life  of  the  home.  The 
miner  who  toils  day  after  day  in  the  dark  caverns  of  the 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  7 1 

earth,  unvisited  by  the  glad,  health-giving  sunlight,  and 
surrounded  by  the  dust  and  echoings  of  his  own  blows, 
comes  up  at  length  from  his  pit  to  breathe  the  pure  air 
of  heaven,  exchanges  his  soiled  garments  for  those  that 
have  gathered  none  of  the  cavern's  dust,  wipes  the  grime 
from  his  dusky  face,  and  finds  himself  a  man,  —  more 
than  the  spade  and  pick  whose  companion  he  has  been. 
Sunday  is  the  rest-day,  the  breathing-spell  of  the  family, 
when  it  is  lifted  up  from  dusty  contact  with  material 
things,  and  in  a  purer  air  and  a  brighter  sunlight  feels  the 
pulsations  of  a  higher  and  more  spiritual  life.  May  the 
time  never  come  when  the  Sabbath  shall  cease  to  shed 
even  this  external  beauty  on  the  humblest  home,  develop- 
ing its  finer  tastes,  interrupting  its  low  earthly  care,  and 
smoothing  out  its  wrinkles,  clothing  it  in  Sunday  hues 
and  brightness,  and  bringing  it  into  contact  with  the  good 
thoughts  of  good  men !  The  outward  re-acts  upon  the 
inward  ;  and  the  Sunday  attire  may  be  the  ascension- 
robe  of  the  mind,  in  which  it  rises  to  a  truer  self-respect, 
a  higher  aspiration,  and  a  nobler  purpose.  A  Sunday 
which  has  only  this  external  observance,  as  a  day  of  rest, 
order,  and  beauty,  will  inevitably  impart  a  healthful  and 
beneficial  influence  to  the  home-life. 

But  it  does  more  than  this.  It  furnishes  needed  oppor- 
tunij:y  for  the  cultivation  and  strengthening  of  the  natural 
affections,  those  ties  which  bind  together  parents  and  chil- 
dren in  a  common  life,  which  unite  the  different  members 
with  different  personalities  and  wills  into  the  unit  of  the 
family,  which  harmoliize  all  wishes  and  temperaments,  all 
idiosyncrasies  and  tastes,  into  the  one  significant,  magnetic 
word,  ''home." 

"  In  every  clime  the  magnet  of  man's  soul, 
Touched  by  remembrance,  vibrates  to  that  pole." 

Another  has  said,  "The  rust  of  the  world  would  soon 


72  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

corrode  the  chain  of  domestic  sympathy  and  love,  were  it 
not  burnished  at  these  frequent  intervals  of  holy  rest." 
There  is  no  good  affection  so  natural  and  spontaneous 
that  it  does  not  need  cultivation  and  care,  times  when, 
untouched  by  the  absorbing,  chilling,  separating  cares  and 
occupations  of  life,  it  shall  grow  and  strengthen  under  the 
genial  influences  of  rest  and  freedom.  We  live  in  a  time 
when  to  large  classes  of  our  fellow-citizens  the  demands 
of  business  are  most  exacting.  Daylight  summons  them 
from  home  to  tasks  which  with  almost  no  intermission 
stretch  themselves  into  the  evening  and  even  into  the 
night.  The  family  board  is  hurriedly  visited,  and  too  often 
deserted.  The  social  life  of  the  home,  in  which  parents 
and  children  meet  in  affectionate  converse,  and  all  minister 
to  the  common  joy,  may  be  for  days  wholly  neglected;  and 
the  home,  to  some  members  of  the  family,  becomes  little 
more  than  a  sleeping-place  for  a  weary  body  and  a  troubled 
mind. 

Grahame's  familiar  lines  tell  only  half  the  truth  :  — 

"  Hail,  Sabbath  !  thee  I  hail,  the  poor  man's  day ! 
On  other  days  the  man  of  toil  is  doomed 
To  eat  his  joyless  bread,  lonely ;  the  ground 
Both  seat  and  board ;  screened  from  the  winter's  cold, 
And  summer's  heat,  by  neighboring  hedge  or  tree ; 
But  on  this  day,  embosomed  in  his  home, 
He  shares  the  frugal  meal  with  those  he  loves." 

Sunday  is  more  than  the  poor  man's  day.  It  is  the  rich 
man's  day  as  well,  who  too  often  finds  that  increasing 
wealth  and  business  bring  increasing  care,  and  make  fresh 
demands  upon  his  already  exhausted  time  and  strength, 
and,  while  checking  more  and  more  the  expression  of  the 
natural  affections  and  the  cultivation  of  the  domestic  vir- 
tues, at  length  take  complete  possession  of  the  man,  and 
monopolize  him.  The  words  of  that  eminent  Dissenting 
clergyman  in  England,  Mr.  Dale,  whose  name  is  known 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  73 

and  whose  influence  is  felt  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic, 
find  an  equal  application  in  our  country,  and  are  worthy 
to  be  repeated.  Speaking  of  the  Sunday  he  saysi^  *'It  is 
also  a  check  on  that  feverish  and  insane  devotion  to  secular 
business  which  is  one  of  the  most  serious  perils  to  the 
moral  life  of  our  own  country.  There  are  too  many 
people  in  England  [and  in  America  also],  on  whose  grave- 
stones the  French  epitaph  might  be  written,  *  He  was 
born  a  man,  and  died  a  grocer.'  Apart  altogether  from 
the  higher  relationships  of  man,  it  is  for  the  interest  of 
the  nation  that  tradesmen,  manufacturers,  and  merchants 
should  find  the  doors  of  their  shops,  their  works,  and  their 
counting-houses  locked  and  barred  against  them  during 
one  day  in  seven,  and  that  for  twenty-four  hours  they 
should  be  emancipated,  by  a  compulsory  law,  from  the 
bondage  which  they  love  too  well,  and  should  be  compelled 
to  spend  their  time  with  their  children  and  friends."  By 
the  advent,  of  the  Sabbath,  and  the  compulsory  absence 
from  business  which  it  brings,  man  is  made  to  feel  that  he 
is  more  than  a  mere  provider  of  food  and  raiment,  that  it  is 
not  the  fruits  of  his  labor  and  the  accumulations  of  his  in- 
dustry alone  that  make  the  home,  —  not  the  dwelling,  how- 
ever well-furnished  and  elegant,  but  it  is  something  which 
the  mason,  the  carpenter,  the  decorator,  cannot  give, — 
which,  indeed,  no  wealth  can  purchase  :  it  is  the  presence 
of  warm  sympathy,  sweet  affection,  a  life  that  lives  in  lov- 
ing hearts,  increases  by  communion,  and  gains  strength  as 
it  is  lavished,  that  will  gild  the  commonest  roof  and  make 
amends  for  the  absence  of  many  a  luxury,  —  indeed,  which 
all  luxury  cannot  bring,  —  and  without  which  the  splendid 
mansion  is  but  a  splendid  mausoleum,  where  lies  buried  all 
that  is  noblest  and  best  in  human  hearts.  The  rest-day  of 
the  week  comes  with  its  divine  breath  to  quicken  into  new 
life  the  domestic  affections,  to  gather  into  closer  fellowship 

1  The  Ten  Commandments,  pp.  117,  118. 


74  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

the  family,  so  that  its  unity  shall  be  lovingly  felt  and 
manifested,  to  bind  all  hearts  together  in  conjugal  and 
parental  love  and  filial  confidence,  and  to  seal  anew 
and  anew  a  union  which,  begun  on  earth,  should  look  for 
its  perfect  consummation  in  heaven. 

And  this  leads  to  the  consideration  of  the  highest  bene- 
fit of  the  Sabbath  to  the  family, — the  opportunity  it  fur- 
nishes and  the  ever-repeated  invitation  it  gives  for  the 
introduction  and  maintenance  of  the  religious  element  in 
the  home-life,  without  which  that  life  is  fatally  incomplete. 
We  look  upon  the  Sabbath  not  simply  as  a  rest-day,  but  as 
a  holy  day,  a  divine  institution,  a  day  set  apart  by  God  for 
religious  purposes,  for  worship,  for  prayer,  praise,  and  the 
study  of  God's  word.  We  look  upon  the  family  also  as  a 
divine  institution,  in  which  God  is  to  be  honored,  his  laws 
revered,  and  his  praises  sung,  and  designed  to  be  in  some 
sense  the  nursery  and  the  earthly  miniature  of  heaven.  It 
is  the  religious  element  that  gives  to  each  its  highest 
dignity  and  value.  Take  away  this,  and  the  Sunday  is 
robbed  of  its  peculiar  glory,  and  the  family  fails  of  its 
divine  mission.  Every  family,  like  that  of  Joseph  and 
Mary,  ought  to  be  a  **holy  family,"  in  which  the  child 
Jesus  is  a  welcome  and  abiding  guest.  It  is  only  when, 
the  affectional  nature,  which  is  the  basis  of  the  home-life, 
is  moved  towards  God  and  divine  things,  and  into  the  love 
of  the  home  there  comes  a  higher  love,  heaven-born  and 
holy,  purifying,  strengthening,  and  encompassing  all,  that 
the  family,  exalted  above  all  merely  earthly  and  temporal 
interests,  assumes  its  true  office  and  relations,  and  be- 
comes a  spiritual  body,  a  school  and  type  of  heaven.  In 
patriarchal  times  the  father  of  the  family  was  prophet,  to 
impart  the  knowledge  of  God  and  his  will ;  and  priest,  to 
lead  the  worship  at  the  sacred  altar  of  home  ;  and  king 
who  as  God's  representative  should  rule  in  his  little  do- 
main with  wise  and  gentle  authority,  whose  throne,  whose 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  75 


law,  whose  sceptre,  should  be  love.  Under  the  dispensa- 
tion of  Christ  and  his  spirit,  the  true  home  is  to  possess  a 
thoroughly  religious  character  and  spirit.  Husbands  are 
to  love  their  wives  even  as  Christ  also  loved  the  Church, 
and  gave  himself  for  it.  Wives  are  to  submit  themselves 
unto  their  husbands  as  unto  the  Lord;  parents  are  to 
bring  up  their  children  in  the  nurture  and  admonition  of 
the  Lord ;  children  are  to  obey  their  parents  in  the  Lord ; 
servants  are  to  render  obedience  in  singleness  of  heart  as 
unto  Christ.  The  whole  family  is  to  be  under  the  control 
of  that  love  which  is  the  essence  of  religion,  and  which  will 
manifest  itself  in  self-surrender,  the  sacrifice  of  personal 
preference,  mutual  submission,  and  all  kind  offices.  In  the 
implantation  and  cultivation  of  this  spirit,  in  securing  and 
preserving  this  beautiful  Christian  ideal  of  the  home,  the 
Sabbath  holds  a  most  important  position,  and  exerts  an 
incalculable  influence.  By  its  sacred  purposes  and  its 
quiet,  hallowed  influences,  by  its  larger  and  uninterrupted 
opportunities  for  religious  instruction  and  the  delightful 
worship  of  home,  it  interrupts  the  hurry  and  bustle  of  the 
week,  beats  back  the  encroachments  of  worldliness,  brings 
God  and  truth  and  heaven  near  to  the  heart  and  life,  pours 
fresh  sweetness,  purity,  and  gladness  into  the  home,  and 
converts  it  more  and  more  into  the  very  sanctuary  of  God. 
During  its  peaceful  hours,  solemn  parental  obligations  can 
be  more  completely  met,  the  precious  truths*  of  revelation 
can  be  more  systematically  unfolded  and  applied,  the  rest, 
the  joy,  the  worship  of  heaven,  can  be  more  vividly  and 
touchingly  portrayed,  and  ^11  hearts  be  led  to  anticipate 
the  home,  the  Sabbath,  the  rest,  and  the  worship  of  an- 
other world. 

"Then  kneeling  down,  to  heaven's  eternal  King 
The  saint,  the  father,  and  the  husband  prays  ; 
Hope  springs  triumphant  on  exulting  wing 
That  thus  they  all  shall  meet  in  future  days, 


^6  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

There  ever  bask  in  uncreated  rays, 
No  more  to  sigh,  nor  shed  the  bitter  tear, 
Together  hymning  their  Creator's  praise 
In  such  society  yet  still  more  dear, 
While  circhng  time  moves  round  in  an  eternal  sphere." 

In  the  old  cemetery  at  Nuremberg,  on  the  monument 
which  marks  the  grave  of  Albrecht  Diirer  is  carved  the 
word  '' Emigravitl'  indicative  of  his  faith  in  the  future  life. 
God's  word  represents  this  Hfe  as  a  pilgrim-life.  The  Sab- 
bath is  the  wayside  spring  at  whose  pure  waters  the  emi- 
grant family  tarries  and  drinks  as  it  seeks  its  other  home. 
The  Sabbath  is  the  furnace-glow  which  melts  all  hearts 
into  one  common  life,  and  separates  the  dross  of  selfish- 
ness and  worldly  impurity.  The  Sabbath  is  the  great  open 
eye  of  the  Pantheon,  which  ever  looks  upward  towards  the 
heavens,  and  through  which  there  fall  into  the  home  the 
very  sunlight  of  God's  love,  and  the  refreshing  rains  of  his 
grace.  The  Sabbath  is  the  strong  dike  which  God  has 
built  to  protect  domestic  purity  and  peace  against  the 
rising  waves  of  corrupt  socialism  and  infidelity.  The  Sab- 
bath is  the  pearly  gate  of  the  earthly  type  of  the  celestial 
city,  open  to  all  good  influences  that  minister  to  the  spirit- 
ual life  of  the  home  ;  but  "•  into  which  there  shall  in  no 
wise  enter  any  thing  that  defileth,  neither  whatsoever 
worketh  abomination,  or  maketh  a  lie."  In  the  words  of 
another:  "The  Sabbath  has  attached  to  home  a  worth  and 
an  interest  which  can  be  derived  from  no  other  source, 
.  .  .  and  stands  second  to  none  of  the  agencies  through 
which  are  shed  upon  us  the  holy  and  happy  influences  of 
Him  in  whom  all  the  families  of  the  earth  are  blessed." 

I  have  not  time  to  indicate,  further  than  I  have  already 
indicated,  how  the  hours  of  the  Sabbath  should  be  em- 
ployed in  the  family.  Physical  rest  should  be  joined  with 
delightful  spiritual  activity,  serious  thoughtfulness  with 
holy  gladness,  mutual  love  and  helpfulness  with  heaven- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  7/ 

ward  aspiration  and  desire,  confiding  communion  and  fel- 
lowship with  the  appropriate  recognition  of  God  in  prayer 
and  praise  and  the  learning  of  his  will.  The  Sunday 
school  should  not  be  made  a  substitute  for  the  home  in 
any  such  way  as  to  allow  the  primary  and  untransferable 
responsibility  of  parents  to  be  laid  upon  it.  Nor  should 
the  home  be  made  the  substitute  for  the  sanctuary  which 
God  has  ordained,  and  where  his  "  honor  dwelleth."  For 
*'the  Lord  loveth  the  gates  of  Zion  more  than  all  the 
dweUings  of  Jacob."  Let  the  Sabbath  bring  to  the  home 
all  holy  and  pleasant  attractions  :  let  it  drive  away  all 
clouds  of  sorrow  and  worldly  care ;  let  it  be  a  day  of 
grateful  joy  and  richest  blessing,  a  day  so  calm,  so  bright, 
so  good,  that  every  family  shall  hail  it  with  a  song  of  irre- 
pressible delight. 

"  Sweet  morn,  whose  light  from  far  beyond  the  sun 
Breaks  with  a  brightness  earth-clouds  cannot  dim  — 
We  hail  its  coming  with  a  holy  hymn 
Of  gratitude  for  six  days'  duties  done, 
Of  supplication  for  a  week  begun  — 
To  God  upborne,  whose  countless  blessings  brim 
Life's  chalice  till  they  overflow  its  rim, 
And  shame  all  wealth  our  wit  and  toil  have  won. 
*  Safely,'  we  sing,  and  dangers  thick  recall, 
That  through  another  week  our  way  beset, 
'Safely'  his  loving  hand  has  brought  us  yet  — 
One  of  our  weeks,  but  pattern  of  them  all. 
'  Tis  more  our  soul's  sweet  zeal  than  body's  rest, 
That  makes  this  day  '  of  all  the  week  the  best.'  " 


7^  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  VS. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   CHARACTER  AND   USES   OF  THE 
SABBATH. 

BY   REV.   A.    J.    GORDON,    D.D.,    OF   BOSTON. 

Whatever  in  the  universe  is  great  is  God's  work.  We 
reason  rightly,  therefore,  whether  we  say  that  the  sabbath 
is  God's  work  because  it  is  great,  or  the  sabbath  is  great 
because  it  is  God's  work.  Either  proposition  can  be  easily 
defended.  I  say,  ''the  sabbath,  God's  work.''  I  do  not 
forget  that  it  is  a  rest  rather  than  a  work,  —  that  it 
represents  God's  cessation  from  labor,  rather  than  the 
fruit  of  his  labor.  But,  as  the  silence  of  the  wise  man  is 
more  majestic  than  the  utmost  speech  of  the  ignorant,  so 
God's  rest  is  a  greater  piece  of  workmanship  than  any 
thing  which  the  toil  and  skill  and  patience  of  man  have 
ever  wrought. 

And  yet  who  has  not  found  it  necessary  sometimes  to 
fortify  the  saying  of  Christ,  "  The  sabbath  was  made  for 
man!'  with  the  qualification,  "  But  the  sabbath  zvas  not 
'jnade  by  mail "  }  So  many  reason,  that,  because  it  was  made 
for  man,  he  may  outgrow  it,  as  the  youth  outgrows  the 
swaddling-clothes  of  infancy.  This  is  what  we  hear  con- 
stantly said ;  and  with  the  assertion  comes  the  inevitable 
charge,  that  in  defending  the  sabbath  and  maintaining  its 
restraints,  we  are  trying  to  force  men  back  into  their  ritual 
baby-clothes,  and  to  impose  upon  them  ceremonial  con- 
straints which  they  have  long  since  outgrown  ;  so  that 
virtually  man  is  seeking  to  remake  for  his  fellow,  what 
God  once  made  for  him,  but  which  he  has  outgrown. 

Well,  in  meeting  this  statement,  that  we  have  outgrown 
the  sabbath,  let  us  see  what  of  truth  there  is  in  it.     For 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  79 

there  is  truth.  Man  docs  outgrow  his  infant-dress.  And 
since  Christ  has  come,  and  brought  the  Church  into  larger 
development  and  maturer  spiritual  age,  she  has  outgrown 
and  cast  off  the  ritual  sabbath  with  its  cumbersome  rites 
and  burdensome  ceremonies.  If  any  would  bind  back 
upon  the  church  or  the  world  these  Levitical  burdens,  or 
any  fragment  of  them,  he  is  clearly  rebuked  by  the  New 
Testament,  which  says,  '*  Let  no  man  therefore  judge  you 
in  meat  or  drink,  or  in  respect  of  an  Jioly  day,  or  of  the 
new  moon  or  of  the  sabbath  days.''  Beyond  all  question  we 
are  done  with  these  things,  since  we  are  not  under  law, 
but  under  grace.  But,  following  the  figure  with  which  we 
started,  while  men  outgrow  their  clothes,  they  never  out- 
grow their  skin.  Clothes  are  external,  and  can  be  put  on 
or  off.  Skin  is  internal,  as  well  as  external.  It  is  a  part 
of  the  body,  knit  up  with  its  nerves  and  blood-vessels 
and  vital  tissues,  and  woven  so  into  the  fabric  of  the 
system,  as  well  as  upon  it,  that  man  would  die  without  it. 
So  the  law  of  the  sabbath  is  wrought  into  man's  native 
constitution.  What  was  graven  on  the  tables  of  stone, 
had  long  before  been  graven  on  the  tables  of  man's  flesh 
and  blood.  The  commandment,  "  Remember  the  sabbath 
day,"  is  written  in  every  muscle  and  sinew  of  the  human 
frame ;  and  he  who  despises  Moses's  law  will  sooner  or 
later  be  arrested  by  a  law  in  his  own  members,  rising  up 
to  inflict  its  penalties  of  lassitude  and  pain  and  bodily 
exhaustion.  Yes,  men  might  outgrow  the  Jewish  sabbath 
when  the  Jewish  dispensation  came  to  an  end.  They  may, 
for  aught  I  know,  outgrow  the  Christian  sabbath  when  the 
Christian  dispensation  shall  come  to  an  end  ;  but  the  sab- 
bath older  than  Jew  or  Christian,  the  sabbath  that  enjoins 
one-seventh  of  a  man's  time  for  rest  and  worship,  can  only 
be  outgrown  when  the  race  has  perished.  That  law  is 
wrought  into  nature,  not  written  without  it.  Like  the  fig- 
ures on  the  potter's  vessel,  which  are  first  stamped  into  the 


8o  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

plastic  clay,  and  then  baked  in  by  fire,  so  that  they  can 
only  be  erased  by  breaking  the  vessel  itself ;  so  the  sab- 
batic law  and  requirements  were  stamped  into  man's  natu- 
ral constitution,  and  educated  upon  him  by  long  discipline, 
and  can  only  be  effaced  when  He  who  made  the  nations 
shall  "break  them  with  a  rod  of  iron,  and  dash  them  in 
pieces  as  a  potter's  vessel."  This  principle,  the  sabbath 
as  old  as  creation,  it  seems  to  me,  settles  the  controverted 
questions  about  the  change  from  the  Jewish  to  the  Chris- 
tian sabbath.  It  is  simply  a  change  of  dress  and  habit, 
not  of  the  thing  itself.  The  primeval  sabbath  took  on  the 
Hebrew  vestments,  if  I  may  say  so,  when  the  Hebrew 
religion  prevailed ;  when  this  passed  away,  and  the  Chris- 
tian economy  came  in,  it  took  on  the  Christian  garb. 
The  change  of  day  was  both  fitting  and  inevitable,  as  the 
great  idea  of  redemption  rest  took  the  place  in  men's 
minds  which  the  creation  rest  had  held  before.  But  there 
has  been  no  change  in  the  sabbath  law  and  principle.  The 
day  comes  just  as  often,  brings  the  same  boon,  summons 
to  the  same  release  from  care  and  the  same  communion 
with  God. 

I  spoke  a  moment  ago  of  the  greatness  of  the  sabbath. 
It  is  well  for  us  to  grasp  something  of  its  magnitude  and 
glory,  preparatory  to  discussing  its  religious  character 
and  uses.  What  majestic  tree  is  this  with  roots  so  vast  and 
far-reaching,  that  they  are  found  running  back  into  Eden, 
and  with  branches  so  wide  and  outstretching,  that  the  whole 
millennial  age  lies  under  their  shadow  }  This  is  no  mere 
figure  of  speech,  but  a  fact  so  literal  that  to  him  who 
grasps  it,  the  violent  assailant  of  the  sabbath  seems  as 
puny  as  a  man  trying  to  level  with  his  fist  one  of  Yo- 
semite's  mighty  pines.  We,  indeed,  who  are  seeking  to 
uphold  this  institution  to-day,  are  but  birds  defending  the 
nests  which  we  have  built  among  its  branches,  and  in 
which  we  have  laid  our  young.    The  tree  needs  no  defence 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  8 1 


from  us.  Trace  the  law  and  development  of  that  wonder- 
ful sabbatic  system  in  the  Jewish  economy, — a  system 
which  was  evidently  designed  to  educate  men  in  a  great 
septenary  idea.  In  the  Hebrew  calendar  there  was  the 
seventh  day  pointing  onward  to  the  seventh  week,  the 
seventh  week  to  the  seventh  month,  the  seventh  month 
to  the  seventh  year,  the  seventh  year  to  the  seventh  year 
of  years,  which  introduced  the  Jubilee;  each  sabbatic 
period  thus  conducting  to  a  larger,  and  all  seeming  de- 
signed to  carry  the  thoughts  on  to  some  final  era  of 
blessed  fruition  and  release,  as  the  successive  barrels  of  a 
telescope  conduct  the  vision  onward  to  a  star. 

Turn  now  to  the  New  Testament,  and  read  that  these 
sabbaths  are  "a  shadow  of  things  to  come,"  and  that 
"there  remaineth  therefore  a  sabbatismos  —  a  sabbath- 
keeping— for  the  people  of  God;"  that  rest-day  for  a 
weary  world,  when  at  last  a  happy  release  shall  be  granted 
her  from  her  weekday  toil  and  pain.  In  the  light  of  such 
sublime  teaching  as  this,  what  do  we  seem  to  be  doing  who 
are  trying  to  defend  the  sabbath  .?  Are  we  fighting  for  a 
fragment  of  antiquated  Jewish  ritual .?  Are  we  seeking  to 
impose  some  sacred  day  of  our  church  calendar  upon  men  } 
Nay!  we  are  only  asking  that  the  spoiler  may  not  be 
allowed  to  tear  down  the  way-marks  to  the  millennium  ; 
that  he  be  not  permitted  to  obliterate  the  guide-posts 
which  direct  our  toiling  and  tired  humanity  to  the  golden 
age  of  its  redemption. 

What  are  the  religious  character  and  uses  of  the  sab- 
bath .? 

The  day  looks  ever  in  two  directions,  towards  God  and 
towards  man.  In  the  one  direction  it  calls  for  worship : 
in  the  other  it  invites  to  rest.  ''  Hallow  ye  the  sabbath 
day;'  —  that  is  the  call  to  worship.  ''The  sabbath  was 
made  for  man;'  —  that  is  the  gift  of  rest.  Thus  the  sab- 
bath is  both  divine  and  human;  given  to  minister  to  God's 


82  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

glory  and  man's  refreshment ;  seeking  to  awaken  in  man 
a  filial  regard  for  God  as  his  Creator,  while  it  declares 
God's  regard  for  man  as  his  dependent  creature.  Let  us 
consider  it  now  in  these  several  relations. 

First,  then,  as  related  to  God,  the  sabbath  is  appointed 
for  worship.  And  worship,  we  must  remember,  has  to  do 
primarily  and  chiefly  with  God  and  not  with  man.  It  is 
an  act  of  acknowledgment  addressed  immediately  to  the 
Most  High.  Praise,  which  contemplates  and  adores  the 
person  of  God ;  thanksgiving,  which  sets  forth  our  admi- 
ration for  the  attributes  and  works  of  God ;  confession, 
which  acknowledges  the  violated  claims  of  God,  —  all 
these  acts  are  of  the  nature  of  worship.  It  is  that  which 
the  soul  renders  to  God,  not  that  which  it  receives  from 
him  ;  and  hence  is  first  and  highest  in  importance. 

Now,  if  it  is  necessary  that  God's  people  should  have 
rest  in  order  that  they  may  worship  fitly,  it  is  first  of  all 
necessary  that  God  should  be  at  rest  in  order  to  be  wor- 
shipped. For  the  essence  of  worship  is  communion,  —  the 
sharing  of  a  common  state  or  condition.  The  ship  which 
is  embosomed  in  the  ocean  can  only  rest  when  the  ocean 
rests ;  and  so  the  soul  which  is  in  communion  with  God  can 
only  rest  as  it  enters  into  God's  rest.  Here,  then,  is  where 
we  find  the  first  warrant  for  sabbath-keeping  :  *'  Remember 
the  sabbath  day  to  keep  it  holy.  .  .  .  For  in  six  days  the 
Lord  made  heaven  and  earth,  the  sea,  and  all  that  in  them 
is,  and  rested  the  seventh  day  ;  wherefore  the  Lord  blessed 
the  sabbath  day,  and  hallowed  it"  (Exod.  xxii.  8,  ii). 
When  the  great  series  of  creative  acts  had  been  complet- 
ed, all  material  laws  established,  and  every  independent 
form  of  life  originated,  then  Jehovah  rested,  and  creation 
gave  place  to  holy  contemplation  and  delight :  **  And  God 
saw  every  thing  that  he  had  made,  and  behold  it  was  very 
good."  It  is  the  almighty  repose,  not  less  majestic  than 
the  almighty  energy,  —  the  satisfaction  of  the  infinitely  per- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  '^l 

feet  One  in  a  work  in  whieh  no  single  flaw  or  imperfection 
is  to  be  found.  And  does  it  seem  strange,  that,  immedi- 
ately after  God  had  entered  on  his  rest,  he  should  summon 
the  sons  of  men,  whom  he  had  created,  to  share  it  with  him, 
and  to  enter  into  his  lofty  delight  over  the  glory  and  per- 
fection of  his  works  ?  When  an  artist  has  wrought  some 
transcendent  work,  and,  after  years  of  thought  and  toil,  has 
laid  the  finishing  touch  upon  the  canvas,  is  not  his  first 
impulse  to  invite  his  friends  to  gaze  upon  his  work,  to 
enter  into  communion  with  his  thoughts,  and  to  share  with 
him  in  his  delight  over  his  achievement  ?  So  God  sum- 
mons man  to  share  with  him  his  lofty  joy  over  his  com- 
pleted work.  And,  just  as  we  might  expect,  much  of  the 
worship  of  the  patriarchs  and  prophets  consisted  in  admi- 
ration of  the  material  creations  of  Jehovah,  and  of  praise 
to  him  as  their  framer  and  fashioner.  How  much  of  the 
Book  of  Job  sounds  like  a  lofty  "  Te  Deum  "  of  the  ele- 
ments  !  —  the  morning  stars  singing  together  while  the 
sons  of  God  shout  for  joy.  How  much  of  the  Psalms, 
that  hymnal  of  Hebrew  worship,  has  its  praise  set  to  the 
music  of  nature,  —  the  sun  and  moon  and  stars,  the 
winds  and  waves  and  waters!  The  first  rest,  then,  was 
the  creation  rest ;  and  the  first  worship  was  worship  of  the 
Creator,  and  communion  with  him  in  his  contemplation  of 
his  finished  work. 

But  Jehovah's  primeval  rest  is  disturbed  by  man's  sin. 
So,  in  the  incarnation,  God  is  seen  working  once  more 
in  the  great  undertaking  of  redemption.  In  the  toiling 
life  of  the  Son  of  God,  in  his  sacrificial  death  and  burial, 
we  see  his  work  progressing  and  ending.  On  the  third 
day  Christ  rises  from  the  dead.  Once  more  God  rests 
from  his  labors.  The  first  day  of  the  week  becomes  hence- 
forth the  Christian  sabbath,  because  on  that  day  the  Lord 
Jesus  entered  into  the  redemption  rest,  even  as  the  Father 
on  the  seventh  day  had  entered   into   the   creation  rest. 


84  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

Very  plainly  is  this  set  forth  in  the  Epistle  to  the  He- 
brews :  "  For  he  that  is  entered  into  his  rest,  he  also  ceased 
fi'om  his  own  works  as  God  did  from  his'^  (iv.  lo).  That 
is,  just  as  God  rested  after  the  toil  of  creation,  Christ 
rested  after  the  toil  of  redemption.  The  story  is  exactly 
parallel  in  both  Testaments.  **Thus  the  heavens  and  the 
earth  \YQrQ  finished,''  says  Genesis  as  it  describes  creation's 
Friday  night.  '' It  is  finished,''  says  Jesus  as  on  redemp- 
tion's Friday  night  he  bowed  his  head,  and  gave  up  the 
ghost.  "And  God  rested  the  seventh  dayfj'om  all  Jus  work 
which  he  had  made,"  says  Genesis.  "He  also  hath  ceased 
from  his  own  works  as  God  did  from  his,"  says  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews. 

And  now,  just  as  God  invited  man  to  share  his  rest  at 
creation,  so  the  Son  of  God  takes  us  into  the  joy  of  his 
redemption  rest.  "  For  we  which  have  believed  do  enter 
into  rest,"  says  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews. 

Hence  the  Lord's  Day  takes  its  place  at  once  in  the  cal- 
endar of  the  new  creation  as  the  Christian's  sabbath.  His 
worship  commemorates  redemption  now  completed.  On 
this  day  the  Lord's  Supper  begins  its  touching  rehearsal 
of  the  "  sufferings  of  Christ,  and  the  glory  which  should 
follow."  Christ,  having  purged  our  sins,  is  seated  at  the 
right  hand  of  God ;  we  that  believe  are  seated  with  him 
in  the  heavenly  places.  All  the  symbols  and  services 
-of  the  Lord's  Day  tell  of  this  rest  in  the  finished  work  of 
'Christ.  The  song  of  the  Lamb  now  employs  men's 
tongues,  and  they  rejoice  and  are  glad  in  the  day  which 
he  has  made. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  sabbath  is  essentially  one  under 
different  manifestations.  As  God  is  one,  and  yet  reveals 
himself  as  the  Father  and  the  Son  and  the  Spirit,  —  each 
person  in  the  Trinity  having  his  successive  dispensation 
in  the  world,  —  so  the  one  sabbath  manifests  itself  in 
successive  revelations.     As  Ebrard  beautifully  says,  "  The 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  85 

seventh  day  was  the  sabbath  of  God  the  Father ;  the  first 
day  is  the  sabbath  of  God  the  Son  ;  and,  with  the  future 
setting-up  of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,  the  sabbath 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  wdll  begin."  The  first  sabbath  marked 
the  finishing  of  creation  ;  the  second,  the  finishing  of  re- 
demption ;  and  the  third  will  mark  the  finishing  of  regen- 
eration. 

Now,  the  one  thing  which  characterizes  the  sabbath 
always  and  everywhere  is  worship.  This  duty  is  laid  upon 
us  by  our  relations  to  God  as  our  Creator  and  Redeemer. 
This  fact  cannot  be  too  strongly  insisted  on.  Man's  wor- 
ship is  a  part  of  God's  vested  rights  in  a  world. which  he 
created  and  redeemed  ;  and  on  the  sabbath  day  the  gates 
of  praise  are  opened,  and  we  are  required  and  commanded 
to  enter  in,  and  pay  this  sacred  tribute.  '*  Praise  is  come- 
ly," says  the  Psalmist ;  but  that  is  not  all :  praise  beloiigeth 
unto  the  Most  High.     George  Herbert  says  quaintly, — 

"  The  Sundays  of  man's  life, 

Threaded  together  on  Time's  string, 
Make  bracelets  to  adorn  the  wife 
Of  the  eternal  glorious  King." 

We  may  admit  that  it  \^  fitting  that  we  should  deck  the 
King  of  glory  with  these  sacred  ornaments  ;  but  that  is 
not  the  whole  question.  It  is,  whether  we  may  withhold 
them,  whether  we  may  pawn  these  jewels  from  heaven's 
casket  for  some  cheap  amusement,  or  loan  them  to  the 
Devil  to  increase  our  working-time  at  God's  expense. 
That  is  the  sin  of  the  world  to-day.  The  Devil's  pawn- 
shop is  full  of  the  Lord's  goods.  It  is  not  enough  that 
he  should  put  his  trade-mark  on  God's  property,  and  get 
men  to  render  worship  which  is  spurious  and  hypocritical. 
No,  he  sets  himself  up  as  a  receiver  of  stolen  goods,  and 
persuades  even  Christians  to  barter  away  their  rest-days 
for  the  privilege  of  doing  his  work  in  pleasure-seeking  or 


86  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

Sunday  labor.  Oh,  what  trades  men  will  make  with  God's 
capital !  We  owe  to  God  a  revenue  of  worship,  and  are 
guilty  of  moral  fraud  if  we  withhold  it. 

But  it  is  evident  also,  that  rest  on  man's  part  is  abso- 
lutely essential  to  true  worship ;  for  worship  is  the  reflec- 
tion of  God,  Its  aim  is  to  conform  us  to  the  image  of 
God  by  meditation  on  his  character  and  communion  with 
his  person.  Contact  and  communion  always  tend  to  beget 
likeness.  When  two  persons  talk  much  together,  their 
words  are  as  swift-flying  shuttles,  weaving  their  thoughts 
into  the  fabric  of  a  common  life.  When  two  persons  love 
each  other,  their  interchange  of  affection  tends  to  mutual 
conformity  of  character.  When  one  admires  another,  and 
contemplates  his  excellences,  he  inevitably  becomes  assimi- 
lated to  him  in  disposition  and  life  and  conduct. 

So  pre-eminently  in  our  relations  to  God.  Communion 
with  him  begets  likeness  to  him.  And  this  is  the  great 
end  of  worship,  —  conformity  to  God.  So  we  are  sum- 
moned to  contemplate  the  Almighty,  and  to  reflect  upon 
his  greatness  and  glory.  But  we  must  rest  in  order  to  do 
this.  It  is  only  the  still  and  tranquil  lake  that  can  mirror 
the  sun.  No  true  reflection,  but  only  broken  rays,  can  be 
caught  by  the  turbulent  and  troubled  waves.  Therefore, 
in  order  that  we  may  remember  our  Creator,  God  says  to 
us,  "Remember  the  sabbath  day  to  keep  it  holy."  Let  the 
troubled  sea  of  earth's  toil  and  tumult  become  a  calm,  that 
God,  who  has  been  driven  from  men's  thoughts,  may  be 
seen  and  adored,  and  his  faded  image  be  once  more  mir- 
rored in  the  heart. 

This  is  where  God's  claim  asserts  itself  most  powerfully. 
Unless  we  are  willing  to  shut  him  out  of  our  lives,  and  not 
to  have  him  in  all  our  thoughts,  it  is  a  principle  of  simple 
justice  that  we  should  give  him  an  opportunity  to  be 
heard  ;  that  we  should  wipe  the  week-day's  dust  from  the 
soul's  object-glass,  and  let  the  image  of  God  shine  upon  it. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  8/ 

What  deep  significance  there  is  in  the  words  of  the 
Almighty,  ''Be  stilly  and  know  that  I  am  God"  !  as  though 
he  could  only  be  known  in  the  hush  and  stillness  of  the 
soul.  "  Speech  is  silver^  silence  is  gold,''  says  the  proverb. 
Eminently  so  is  it  in  our  relations  to  God ;  for  silence  is 
receptive.  It  is  the  soul's  waiting  and  teachable  attitude  ; 
it  is  the  upturned  ear  which  says,  **  Speak,  Lord,  for  thy 
servant  heareth  ; "  it  is  the  submitted  heart  which  says, 
"Lord,  what  wilt  thou  have  me  to  do.?"  How  greatly  in 
this  age,  when  the  currency  of  speech  is  so  inflated,  do  we 
need  to  learn  the  value  of  this  gold  of  silence!  How 
vastly  important,  in  the  intense  activities  of  this  nine- 
teenth century,  that  we  should  learn  that  hardest  lesson 
of  "masterly  inactivity"  on  the  appointed  days  of  rest! 
Cease  your  noisy  talking,  O  ye  sons  of  men,  and  hear 
what  God  will  say  to  you  !  Cease  your  work,  that  you 
may  be  wrought  upon  by  Him  who  alone  is  able  to  work 
in  you  to  will  and  to  do  the  right ! 

Indeed,  a  refusal  to  rest  and  be  still  on  the  sabbath  is 
an  indication  of  the  most  arrogant  self-conceit.  It  is  say- 
ing virtually  to  God,  "  I  must  talk  seven  days  in  a  week, 
but  I  have  no  need  even  for  one  day  to  be  talked  to.  I 
must  work  seven  days  in  the  week ;  but  I  have  no  need 
even  for  one  day  to  be  wrought  upon."  The  fool  is  one 
who  not  only  "says  in  his  heart.  There  is  no  God,"  but  who 
is  forever  chattering  with  his  tongue  of  his  own  impor- 
tance. The  wise  man  is  he  who  knows  enough  to  shut  his 
mouth,  and  open  his  ears,  when  God  says,  "  Be  still,  and 
know  that  I  am  God.  I  will  be  exalted  among  the 
heathen,  I  will  be  exalted  in  the  earth." 

Having  said  that  rest  is  an  essential  condition  of  wor- 
ship, I  wish  to  notice  the  kind  of  rest  that  is  essential. 
For  there  are  two  kinds  of  rest,  —  the  rest  of  sleep  and 
the  rest  of  recreation.  When  we  lie  down  at  night  to 
slumber,  the  whole  man,  the  mind  and  the  body  alike, 
passes  into  repose.     That  is  the  rest  of  sleep. 


88  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

When  the  student  becomes  wearied  with  his  intellect- 
ual efforts,  he  leaves  his  books  and  his  thinking,  and  gives 
himself  to  some  vigorous  bodily  exercise.  Or,  when  the 
laborer  is  tired  of  his  manual  toil,  he  sits  down,  and  regales 
himself  by  reading  some  pleasant  story.  This  in  either 
case  is  the  rest  of  recreation.  The  rest  of  sleep  is  the 
cessation  of  all  activity ;  the  rest  of  recreation  is  an 
exchange  of  activities,  relieving  one  by  exclusive  use  of 
the  other. 

Now,  such  in  kind  is  the  rest  to  which  God  invites  us 
on  the  sabbath.  Man  is  a  threefold  being,  with  spirit, 
soul,  and  body.  During  the  week  the  body  is  taxed  with 
labor,  or  the  mind  with  severe  study  or  thought,  accord- 
ing to  our  occupation.  On  the  sabbath  God  says,  "Come, 
O  children  of  men,  relax  the  muscles  of  the  body  from 
their  burdens  ;  release  the  intellect  from  its  heavy  strain 
of  thinking ;  and  let  both  find  rest  in  the  exercise  of  the 
soul."  Bend  the  affections  to  praise  and  adoration;  bring 
the  spirit's  powers  into  the  exalted  work  of  contemplat- 
ing God  and  studying  his  attributes  and  acts.  Rouse  the 
soul's  faculties  to  the  most  intense  and  strenuous  worship 
of  which  they  are  capable,  and  so  find  rest  for  body  and 
mind  in  the  holy  toil  of  a  worshipping  heart.  That  is 
the  rest  to  which  God  calls  us  on  his  day.  Not  the  rest 
of  sabbath  idleness  or  sleep,  not  the  yawning  enmii  of 
sacred  sluggishness  :  nay,  just  the  contrary  is  the  scrip- 
ture exhortation.  ''  Therefore  let  us  not  sleep  as  do  others, 
but  let  us  watch  and  be  sober.  For  they  that  sleep,  sleep 
in  the  night;  and  they  that  are  drunken,  are  drunken  in 
the  night.  But  let  us  who  are  of  the  day  be  sober,  put- 
ting on  the  breastplate  of  faith  and  love,  and  for  an  hel- 
met the  hope  of  salvation."  So  binding  is  this,  that  I 
believe  that  a  man  violates  the  sabbath  just  as  effectually 
by  sleeping  away  his  Sunday  hours  as  by  employing  them 
in  work.     In  the  one  case  he  disturbs  God's  rest  by  his 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  89 

snoring,  and  in  the  other  by  his  pounding ;  and  the  first 
is  more  odious,  if  any  thing,  than  the  second.  Away  with 
the  sacrilege  of  slumbering  out  the  Lord's  Day  hours,  and 
calling  it  rest !  The  rest  to  which  he  invites  us  is  found 
in  the  alert  and  tireless  use  of  the  spiritual  powers.  The 
worship  that  is  in  spirit  and  in  truth  is  infinitely  restful. 
As  ''David  took  a  harp,  and  played  with  his  hand,  and 
Saul  was  refreshed  and  made  well,  and  the  evil  spirit 
departed  from  him,"  so  the  high  praises  of  God's  sanctu- 
ary, its  songs  and  psalms  and  hallelujahs,  refresh  the 
weary  body,  and  heal  the  tired  and  thought-sick  mind. 

Having  considered  the  character  and  uses  of  the  sab- 
bath as  related  to  the  glory  of  God,  let  us  consider  it, 
secondly,  as  related  to  the  happiness  and  well-being  of 
man.  For  this  is  the  evident  thpught  in  the  words, 
''the  sabbath  was  made  for  man,"  that  God  ordained  and 
adapted  the  day  for  the  comfort  and  blessing  of  his  chil- 
dren in  all  time.  Instead  of  being  a  day  for  the  binding 
of  burdens,  it  is  a  day  of  release  from  burdens;  instead  of 
being  a  ceremonial  yoke  upon  the  neck  of  man  for  tying 
him  up  to  hard  and  exacting  service,  it  is  an  ordinance 
of  emancipation  from  earthly  toil  and  hardship.  And  in 
this  fact  we  find,  I  think,  one  of  the  highest  religious  uses 
of  the  sabbath.  It  is  a  commendation  of  God's  love  and 
compassion  towards  us  his  burdened  and  toiling  sons.  For 
whatever  is  humane  in  God's  religion  commends  that  reli- 
gion as  divine.  "  I  know  that  this  Bible  is  God's  book," 
said  Arthur  Hallam,  "  because  it  is  man's  book  ;  because 
it  fits  into  every  turn  and  fold  of  the  human  heart."  And 
so  we  may  say  in  regard  to  God's  day.  The  highest  proof 
of  its  divinity  is  its  humanity.  It  is  not  an  institution 
set  up  by  God's  arbitrary  will,  and  to  which  man  must 
bend  at  whatever  cost.  It  is  an  institution,  rather,  which 
is  cast  in  the  mould  of  man's  necessities,  and  fashioned  to 
the  end  of  his  blessing  and  comfort.     Its  requirements  fit 


90  SABBA  TH  ESSA  VS. 

the  human  heart,  as  the  casting  fits  the  matrix  in  which  it 
was  shaped.  So  that  one  of  the  most  evident  proofs  that 
the  sabbath  was  made  by  God  is  that  it  was  made /<?r  man. 

This  Hne  of  argument  was  a  favorite  one  with  Vinet  as 
applied  to  the  whole  system  of  Christian  evidences.  He 
contended  that  the  highest  indication  of  the  supernatural 
character  of  the  gospel  is  its  marvellously  natural  charac- 
ter ;  so  that  the  "  Christian  religion  and  humanity,  when 
rightly  apprehended,  each  leads  back  to  the  other ;  faith 
towards  nature,  and  nature  towards  faith."  But  the  insti- 
tution of  the  sabbath  is  to  my  mind  the  most  conspicuous 
illustration  of  this  idea.  It  is  God's  answer  to  humanity's 
** universal  instinct  of  repose."  It  comes  to  vindicate  man 
from  the  oppressor's  exactions,  and  to  defend  his  cause 
against  the  taskmaster's  tyranny. 

Thus  the  sabbath  becomes  one  of  the  most  powerful 
of  the  Christian  evidences.  It  is  an  argument  from  the 
heart  of  God,  to  the  heart  of  man.  *'  Come  unto  me,  all  ye 
that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest," 
is  Christ's  message  to  a  weary  and  sin-burdened  world. 
''Who  art  thou.  Lord,  that  we  should  come.'*"  —  "I  am  he 
that  giveth  thee  one  day  for  rest  when  thy  masters  would 
give  thee  none  :  I  am  he  that  removeth  thy  shoulder  from 
the  burden,  and  delivereth  thy  hands  from  the  pots,  when 
they  who  rule  thee  would  make  thee  grind  in  perpetual 
servitude.  I  am  he  that  saith  upon  the  sabbath,  '  Break 
every  yoke,  and  let  the  oppressed  go  free,'  when  men  have 
bound  heavy  burdens  upon  thee,  and  refused  to  lift  them 
with  one  of  their  fingers.  Return  unto  thy  rest,  O  tired 
soul!  For  this  is  a  statute  for  Israel,  and  a  law  of  the 
God  of  Jacob." 

Just  here  is  where  the  Christian  has  an  immense  advan- 
tage over  the  infidel  in  the  discussion  of  the  sabbath  ques- 
tion ;  for  the  plea  which  he  makes  for  Christianity  is  at 
the  same  time  a  plea  for  humanity. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  NATURE.  9 1 

In  a  recent  anti-sabbath  convention  held  in  this  city,  I 
heard  several  well-known  free-thinkers  appealing  vehe- 
mently to  the  people  to  rise  up  against  the  tyranny  of 
Sunday  laws  and  restrictions.  **  Let  the  day  be  as  free 
as  any  other,"  they  demanded.  **  Let  the  cars  and  steam- 
boats run  ad  libittim,  for  conveying  the  tired  people  on 
excursions  into  the  fields  and  upon  the  waters.  Let  the 
reading-rooms  and  theatres  be  open  for  the  entertainment 
of  the  weary  working-people.  Let  the  shop-keeper  be 
free  to  take  down  his  shutters,  and  sell  his  fruit  and 
refreshments  to  the  hungry  and  thirsty  crowds  that  shall 
pass  by."  This  was  the  plea  of  the  liberals,  for  emancipa- 
tion from  the  Sunday  yoke. 

But  let  us  analyze  it  for  a  moment.  If  the  cars  and 
steamboats  run  on  the  sabbath,  the  engineers  and  stokers 
and  brakemen  and  conductors  and  drivers  must  work  to 
keep  them  running.  If  the  reading-rooms  and  theatres 
are  open,  the  librarians  and  door-keepers  and  waiters  and 
performers  must  be  at  their  posts.  If  the  stores  are 
open,  the  clerks  and  porters  and  book-keepers  must  be  on 
hand  to  carry  on  the  business.  In  the  encroachments 
upon  the  sabbath  which  have  already  taken  place,  all  this 
has  been  proved  true.  There  are  hundreds  of  men  in  our 
cities,  as  I  know  from  investigation,  who  are  compelled  to 
work  every  Sunday  against  their  will,  or  lose  their  situa- 
tions. And  the  number  has  increased  just  in  proportion 
as  the  sabbath  restrictions  have  relaxed.  Is  not  it  strange, 
that  men  who  assume  the  name  of  "advanced  thinkers" 
should  put  forth  a  plea  for  liberty,  which  is  so  utterly  and 
thoughtlessly  self-contradictory  as  this  .?  They  assume  to 
be  friends  of  the  working-man,  and  then  clamor  for  a  free- 
dom that  shall  compel  him  to  work  seven  days  in  the 
week.  They  call  themselves  the  defenders  of  the  laboring 
classes,  and  then  demand  that  all  laws  shall  be  expunged 
from  the  Bible  and  from  the  statute-book,  which  may  pre- 


92  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

vent  the  taskmaster  from  exacting  the  entire  time  of  the 
servant  in  toil;  and  giving  him  none  for  recreation.  Surely 
"  the  tender  mercies  of  the  wicked  are  cruel.''  The  merciful 
Framer  of  the  world  devised  a  system  for  giving  rest  to  his 
creatures  when  they  should  need  it.  Men  have  tried  to 
improve  upon  it,  and  to  supersede  it  in  the  name  of  liberty; 
but  every  such  attempt  has  proved  in  the  end  a  concession 
to  tyranny.  *'  The  sabbath,"  it  has  been  beautifully  said, 
is  **the  smile  of  creation."  That  smile  can  be  truly  found 
only  upon  the  upturned,  restful  face  of  the  obedient  wor- 
shipper of  God.  The  smile  which  the  infidel  is  trying  to 
bring  upon  the  countenance  of  society  will  prove  only  the 
counterfeited  smirk  of  men  and  women  who  are  trying  to 
look  happy,  while  they  are  tiring  themselves  out  in  the 
effort  to  find  rest,  and  wearying  both  themselves  and  their 
Creator  with  their  sinful  dissipations,  and  calling  it  recrea- 
tion. There  is,  there  can  be,  no  rest  for  man  but  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  laws  of  Him  who  made  him.  ''  Oh  that  thou 
hadst  hearkened  unto  my  commandments  !  then  had  thy 
peace  been  as  a  river,  and  thy  righteousness  as  the  waves 
of  the  sea."  "But  the  wicked  are  like  the  troubled  sea 
when  it  cannot  rest,  whose  waters  cast  up  mire  and  dirt. 
There  is  no  peace,  saith  my  God,  to  the  wicked." 

I  have  said  that  in  the  controversy  concerning  the 
sabbath,  the  Christian  has  an  immense  advantage  on  the 
humane  and  philanthropic  side  over  the  infidel.  The  ad- 
vantage is  this  :  The  Christian,  in  asserting  the  sanctity  of 
the  sabbath,  and  urging  its  maintenance,  is  simply  retra- 
cing the  lines  of  a  law  which,  however  dimmed  and  faded, 
is  deeply  written  on  the  human  heart.  The  infidel,  in 
assailing  the  sabbath,  is  contending  both  against  revelation 
and  against  nature.  He  must  not  only  desupernaturalize 
the  Bible,  but  he  must  denaturalize  nature.  I  think  it 
must  be  clear  to  any  one  now,  that  the  sabbath  has  a  most 
powerful  religious  use  in  mediating  between  God  and  man. 


THE  SABBA  TH  IN  NA  TURK.  93 

If  religion,  according  to  the  common  opinion,  means  to 
bind  back,  the  sabbath  constitutes  a  double  bond  between 
the  Creator  and  man.  It  binds  and  braids  together 
natural  and  revealed  religion  into  a  single  twofold  cord. 
With  its  claim  for  man's  homage,  it  unites  a  proffer  of 
divine  good-will.  With  the  command,  "  Thou  shalt  worship 
the  Lord  thy  God,"  it  joins  the  invitation,  **  Come  unto  me, 
and  rest."  With  the  requirement  that  man  shall  look  to 
God  in  worship  and  adoration,  it  unites  the  assurance  that 
God  is  looking  down  from  heaven  upon  man,  to  give  the 
hireling  respite  from  his  toils,  and  to  give  the  maiden 
release  from  the  service  of  her  mistress.  Thus,  whatever 
conflicts  and  disagreements  the  soul  may  have  with  God, 
the  sabbath  constitutes  a  perpetual  meeting-place  of  rec- 
onciliation. It  is  the  one  point  and  the  one  place  where 
the  word  of  God  and  the  heart  of  man  find  nearest  agree- 
ment. 

Thus  the  Sabbath  is  of  the  highest  use  as  an  evidence 
of  the  truth  of  revealed  religion.  Two  witnesses  establish 
a  fact.  When  your  watch  as  you  take  it  from  your  pocket 
is  found  to  agree  to  a  second  with  the  town-clock,  you  are 
strongly  assured  that  you  have  the  true  time  of  day.  So, 
when  the  dial  of  nature  is  found  to  asfree  with  the  dial 
of  revelation,  what  conviction  it  awakens  of  the  truth  of 
the  Bible !  If  the  pulse-beats  of  the  heart  tick  with  the 
seconds  of  God's  sabbatic  time,  so  that  when  God's  clock 
strikes  seven,  the  heart  says  seven  also,  how  the  convic- 
tion is  strengthened  and  deepened  that  God  must  be  the 
author  and  regulator  of  both !  One  of  the  most  interest- 
ing narratives  of  conversion  which  I  have  ever  read  was 
effected  by  just  this  line  of  reasoning:  a  man  who  had 
defied  and  trampled  upon  the  sabbath,  arrested  at  last  by 
a  law  in  his  own  nature,  and  compelled  to  take  rest  on  the 
Lord's  Day,  and,  from  the  relief  and  blessing  which  he 
experienced,  convinced  of   the  beneficence  of    God,  and 


94  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

the  truth  of  the  Bible  which  has  enjoined  such  a  rest-day. 
And  I  presume  the  annals  of  the  Church  are  full  of  such 
instances. 

God's  seventh-day  law  is  thus  seen  to  be  written  on  the 
heart  of  man.  It  may  be  written,  in  the  case  of  many, 
only  as  with  invisible  ink.  But  when  by  the  light  of 
some  powerful  revelation,  or  by  the  fire  of  some  great 
affliction,  the  letters  are  clearly  brought  out,  what  con- 
viction they  bring  as  they  are  found  to  be  the  exact 
transcript  of  God's  holy  law !  and  as  God  calls  the  weary 
world  to  rest,  how  does  man's  deepest  heart  respond, 
'*  Return  unto  thy  rest,  O  my  soul !  for  the  Lord  hath 
dealt  bountifully  with  me.^^ 


SECOND: 

THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  WORD  OF 

GOD. 


THE    SABBATH    OF    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT:    ITS 
GROUNDS  AND  METHOD  OF  INFLUENCE. 

BY  REV.  THOMAS  ARMITAGE,  D.D.,  OF  NEW  YORK. 

Moses  attributes  the  crowning  act  of  God  in  the  mak- 
ing of  man,  to  the  sixth  day,  in  the  order  of  creation, 
thus  making  the  seventh  the  first  full  day  of  his  existence; 
and  as  the  seventh  was  chosen  for  the  sabbath,  it  is  coeval 
with  man.  Whatever  period  of  time  may  be  covered  by 
the  word  "day"  in  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  creation,  is 
immaterial  to  this  discussion,  since  it  is  clear  that  the 
sacred  writer  uses  the  period  represented  by  a  *'day," 
having  a  definite  beginning  and  end,  "  an  evening  and  a 
morning,"  as  a  symbolism  to  represent  the  periods  of 
the  divine  labor  and  rest ;  and  so  it  is  immaterial  to  this 
discussion,  whether  the  symbol  were  clothed  in  the  cos- 
tume of  the  literal  or  not.  In  any  case,  the  word  ''day" 
is  a  human  term  under  which  the  sublime  mystery  of 
divine  work,  and  cessation  therefrom,  is  couched.  '*  And 
God  blessed  the  seventh  day,  and  sanctified  it;  because 
that  in  it  he  had  rested  from  all  his  work  which  God  cre- 
ated." 1  Then  the  first  sabbath  dawned  upon  our  earth 
before  it  was  blighted  by  the  curse ;  and  on  its  peaceful 

1  Gen.  ii.  3. 

95 


96  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

morning,  Adam  awoke  from  his  first  night's  repose  to  cele- 
brate the  wisdom  and  power  of  God,  as  they  burst  upon 
his  soul  from  this  wonderful  universe,  with  his  first  sun- 
rise. Phidias,  the  renowned  sculptor,  so  intertwined  his 
own  name  with  the  curious  work  on  the  shield  of  Minerva, 
over  the  portico  of  the  Acropolis  of  Athens,  that  it  could 
not  be  cut  away  without  destroying  his  whole  work.  In 
like  manner  the  eye  of  man  read  the  signature  of  the 
great  Architect  everywhere,  when  the  sun  flooded  the  new 
creation  with  glory,  and  before  a  muscle  of  his  body  was 
toilworn,  or  a  faculty  of  his  soul  clouded  by  sin.  The 
whole  creation  was  to  him  Jehovah's  infinite  argument, 
that  he  was  man's  Maker.  Thus  the  Adamic  sabbath 
was  generic,  was  made  for  man  in  his  individuality  as 
man;  for  no  social  or  national  relations  then  existed.  It 
was  to  work  out  for  him  both  conviction  and  joy,  even  in 
his  innocency.  The  first  purpose  of  the  primeval  sab- 
bath, then,  was  the  commemoration  of  Jehovah's  creative 
attributes,  a  standing  monument  of  that  great  monotheism 
which  underlies  both  human  responsibility  and  divine 
revelation.  This  purpose  of  the  sabbath  was  infinitely 
worthy  of  its  Founder;  for,  when  ''the  heavens  and  the 
earth  were  finished,  and  all  the  host  of  them,"  it  stood  an 
eternal  protest  against  every  possible  form  of  materialism, 
pantheism,  and  atheism.  The  first  sabbath  commanded 
man  to  stand  still,  while  the  "heavens"  declared  to  him 
''the  glory  of  God,  and  the  firmament"  showed  "forth  his 
handiwork."  It  challenged,  "Why  lookest  thou  so  ear- 
nestly on  us,  as  though  by  our  own  power  we  had  made 
ourselves }  Jehovah  is  the  maker  of  us  all."  The  first 
sabbath  attested  to  man  that  the  world  was  not  its  own 
creator,  that  an  unbridgeable  gulf  stretches  between  un- 
conscious things  and  the  living  God,  —  between  divine 
volitions  and  the  eternity  of  matter.  Its  mute  eloquence 
witnessed  for  God,  then  as  now,  and  barred  out  all  idea  of 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.         9/ 

pagan  adoration  to  strange  gods  and  all  worship  of  nature, 
by  claiming  man's  first  homage  for  the  Creator  of  heaven 
and  earth. 

Again,  the  law  of  the  original  sabbath  is  written  on  the 
framework  and  constitution  of  man  for  the  most  benevo- 
lent ends  in  his  whole  nature.     The  foundations  of  the 
sabbath  rest  are   laid  deeply  and   permanently  upon  the    I 
needs  of  humanity,  and  exert  an  elementary  hygienic  power,  I 
over  the  physical,  mental,  and  moral  man,  without  which  ■/ 
his  highest  well-being  cannot  be  promoted ;  proving  that  / 
it  is  not  an  arbitrary  human  expedient,  but  a  vital   neces-/  ' 
sity  for  the  government  of  his  life.     He  was  not  made  to 
stagnate  in  idleness,  but  to  be  energetic  ;  and  one  day's 
rest  in  seven  was  granted,  to  refresh,  enlarge,  and  enrich 
all  his  faculties.     Physical  exhaustion  is  insured   to  him 
by  the  very  delicacy  of  his  bodily  tissues.     All  the  chan- 
nels by  which  the  mind  performs  its  functions  must  clog 
under  its  exactions  on  the  brain  and  its  gossamer  congre- 
gation of  nerves.     These,  with  the  perturbed  fever  of  the 
moral  nature,  all  prove  the  truth  of  Aristotle's  philosophi- 
cal statement,  ''that  the  end  of  labor  is  to  gain  leisure;" 
and  the  sabbath  commands  that  leisure  after  each  week's 
labor.     It  follows  as  a  consequence,  that  the  natural  lib- 
erty of  man  is  outraged  whenever  a  materialistic  plutoc- 
racy attempts  to  disturb  this  balance  of  natural   forces; 
for  by  robbing  him  of  his  weekly  rest  he  is  reduced  to  a 
socialistic    machine,  and   left    without    his    chief   defence 
against     avarice,     overwork,    and     heartless    oppression. 
From  the  beginning  of  man's  existence  to   this  day,  no 
human  legislator  has  submitted  a  law  of  property,  where- 
by a  slave,  or  a  free  laborer,  or  even  the  beast  of  burden, 
should  surrender  a  seventh  part  of  their  toil  as  a  volun- 
tary concession  to  their   inherent   rights  :    human    greed 
and  heartlessness  have  never  made   this   possible.     No : 
the  sabbath  springs  from  the  nature  of  things,  as  they  are 


98  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

expressed  in  the  human  constitution,  and  the  benevolent 
considerations  which  govern  man's  creaturely  relations  to 
God.  This  preconformation  between  man  and  his  rightful 
sabbath  is  as  unique  and  benevolent  as  that  between  his 
eye  and  the  light,  his  lungs  and  the  air.  It  links  up  a 
sense  of  creaturely  frailty  with  the  omnipotence  of  the 
Creator,  which,  when  once  removed,  leaves  man  to  work 
seven  days  in  and  seven  days  out,  until  for  sheer  want  of 
repose  his  whole  nature  sinks. 

An  ingenious  attempt  has  been  made  to  show  that  the 
Mosaic  record  of  the  Adamic  sabbath  is  not  historical, 
but  anticipatory  of  what  actually  took  place  on  Sinai,  in 
the  giving  of  the  Fourth  Commandment,  twenty-five  hun- 
dred years  afterwards.  But  the  honest  simplicity  of  the 
record  itself  makes  this  a  part  of  the  history  of  the  crea- 
tion, quite  as  much  as  the  other  parts,  and  sets  aside  the 
supposition  that  the  sabbath  was  an  after-thought.  As 
becomes  a  faithful  historian  of  facts,  Moses  throws  no 
guard  around  his  statement  to  warn  us  against  the  suppo- 
sition that  the  sabbath  was  a  pre-existent  institution,  but 
leaves  the  impression  that,  as  established  facts,  the  sab- 
baths of  Eden  and  Sinai  are  identical.  His  consecutive 
arrangement  of  facts,  in  the  history  of  creation,  properly 
cuts  off  all  speculation  here,  and  shows  that  the  antiquity 
•  of  the  sabbath  is  parallel  with  the  antiquity  of  the  man 
for  whom  it  was  made;  so  that  it  both  antedates  and  out- 
lives the  Jewish  system.  Many  passages  in  Genesis  not 
only  indicate  that  the  patriarchs  kept  the  sabbath,  —  such, 
for  example,  as  those  which  speak  of  time  as  divided  into 
*' weeks,"  —  but  this  position  draws  support  from  the  fact 
that  the  substance  and  spirit  of  the  other  nine  words  of 
the  Decalogue  were  obeyed  from  the  beginning,  without 
the  exact  formulation  of  the  Sinaitic  tables.  God  said  to 
Abraham,  "  I  am  the  Almighty  God  :  walk  before  me,  and 
be  thou  perfect."     What  is  this  but  that  he  should  have 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD    OF  GOD.         99 

no  other  God  but  him,  according  to  the  First  Command- 
ment ?  When  Jacob  insisted  upon  the  removal  of  idol 
imasfes  which  Rachel  his  wife  had  stolen  from  Laban,  had 
he  not  in  view  that  jealousy  of  Jehovah  against  idolatry, 
which  the  Second  Commandment  sets  forth  ?  The  patri- 
arch took  the  solemn  legal  oath  in  the  name  of  the  Lord, 
an  act  which  implies  that  reverence  for  the  divine  name, 
which  the  Third  Commandment  enforces.  In  what  spirit 
did  the  children  of  Noah  and  Abraham  "honor  their 
father,"  but  that  of  the  Fifth  Commandment  ?  The  full 
animus  of  the  Sixth  Commandment  is  amply  seen  in  the 
treatment  of  Cain  for  the  murder  of  his  brother.  Were 
the  requisitions  of  the  Seventh  Commandment  ever  more 
devoutly  obeyed  than  by  Joseph,  in  rejecting  the  blandish- 
ments of  his  master's  wife  under  the  protest  of  ''great 
wickedness  and  sin  against  God  "  ?  When  the  same  Jo- 
seph charged  theft  upon  his  brethren,  their  denial  contains 
the  substance  of  the  Eighth  Commandment,  "  Thou  shalt 
not  steal."  Pharaoh's  reproof  to  Abraham,  for  deceiving 
him  in  saying  that  Sarah  his  wife  was  his  sister,  forbids 
"false  witness,"  in  the  spirit  of  the  Ninth  Commandment; 
and  the  discovery  that  she  was  his  "  neighbor's  wife " 
appears  to  have  ended  his  covetous  desire  for  her,  in 
keeping  with  the  demands  of  the  Tenth.  But  if  the  very 
essence  of  these  nine  enactments  of  Sinai  w^as  in  action, 
and  the  Fourth  Commandment,  found  in  the  very  heart  of 
this  legislation,  was  non-existent,  from  Adam  to  Moses, 
the  exception  is  most  unaccountable  in  every  way.  The 
fact  is,  that  a  new  world  without  a  sabbath  for  five  and 
twenty  centuries,  would  have  made  the  home  of  man  as 
imperfect  as  to  have  left  it  without  a  law  forbidding  theft, 
adultery  and  murder ;  as  imperfect  as  he  himself  would 
have  been  without  its  ever-recurring  septenary  rest  and 
health  and  strength.  But  whether  these  sins  were  for- 
bidden in  so  many  words,  or  not,  we  find  that,  by  the  very 


I OO  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

first  sabbath  institute,  man  rendered  to  God  the  natural 
act  of  mora]  submission,  and  came  to  the  royal  enjoyment 
of  sabbatic  holiness.  Besides,  whatever  may  be  the 
genesis  of  a  ceremonial  ordinance,  or  its  fluctuations,  the 
prime  attributes  of  moral  law  are  its  eternity  and  immu- 
tability. But,  if  the  right  of  God  to  one-seventh  part  of 
man's  time  was  not  known  through  the  long  stretch  of  the 
patriarchal  ages,  on  what  moral  ground  does  he  require 
a  sabbath  now  that  was  not  operative  then  .?  We  must 
reach  the  conclusion  that  a  patriarchal  sabbath  enforced 
his  right  then,  and  that,  to  men  in  that  age  as  well  as 
afterwards,  he  vouchsafed  sabbatic  rest  for  his  worship,  his 
honor  and  blessing. 

The  fact  that  the  sabbath  is  not  specifically  mentioned 
in  the  Old  Testament,  between  the  account  of  the  creation 
and  the  exodus  from  Egypt,  no  more  shows  it  to  have 
been  unknown  then  than  it  was  during  the  silence  of  the  six 
hundred  years  which  ran  through  the  time  of  the  Judges, 
and  the  administrations  of  Samuel  and  Saul.  During 
those  six  centuries,  kings,  priests,  prophets,  and  the  Jew- 
ish nation  itself  were  sacredly  observing  the  day,  and  yet 
it  is  not  mentioned  once.  It  is  not  at  all  likely  that  the 
Egyptian  taskmasters  allowed  the  Israelites  a  sabbath 
rest  in  their  bondage.  But  the  law  of  the  sabbath  seems 
to  have  been  fully  known  to  them  before  the  giving  of 
the  Decalogue.  Two  months  before  the  Israelites  reached 
Sinai,  we  find  them  distinguishing  the  sixth  from  the 
seventh  day,  and  gathering  twice  as  much  manna  on  the 
sixth  as  on  other  days.  And  when  the  elders  inquired  of 
Moses  whether  they  had  done  rightly  in  this  forecast,  he 
said,  "  To-morrow  is  the  rest  of  the  holy  sabbath.  Six 
days  ye  shall  gather  it,  but  on  the  seventh  day,  which  is 
the  sabbath,  in  it  shall  be  none ;  "  and  so  on  the  sixth 
day  they  gathered  enough  for  two  days.  But  some  of  the 
people  went  out  on  the  sabbath  to  gather  manna  notwith- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE   WORD   OF  GOD.       lOI 

standing ;  and  the  Lord  remonstrated  against  their  wilful 
disobedience,  saying,  "  How  long  refuse  ye  to  keep  my 
commandments  and  my  laws?"  a  form  of  remonstrance 
which  showed  them  to  be  acquainted  with  his  sabbath  law, 
and  also  their  dehberate  refusal  to  keep  it.  The  whole 
air  of  familiarity  thrown  around  the  narrative,  proves  their 
acquaintance  with  the  sabbath  as  an  established  fact,  and 
that  it  was  not  a  new  revelation.  Then,  they  ask  no  ques- 
tions as  to  what  its  meaning  was,  why  it  existed,  how  to 
keep  it,  or  what  its  benefits  were  ;  all  of  which  questions 
must  have  attended  a  new  institution.  The  simple  fact  is 
stated,  that  the  seventh  day  is  the  sabbath  ;  and  they 
show  themselves  to  be  sufficiently  famihar  with  all  its 
claims,  to  honor  its  observance. 

We  now  come  to  look  at  the  grounds  and  methods  of 
the  Old-Testament  sabbath  as  we  find  it  in  what  is  called 
the  Jewish,  or  Mosaic  form,  under  the  theocracy.  When 
the  Jewish  provisions  of  the  sabbath  law  were  promul- 
gated, the  Hebrews  were  not  only  a  religious  people,  but 
also  a  civil  nation,  and  lived  under  the  direct  municipal, 
religious,  and  regal  government  of  Jehovah  himself.  The 
Mosaic  form  of  the  sabbath  law  is  found  in  Exod.  xx. 
8-1 1  :  "Remember  the  sabbath  day,  to  keep  it  holy.  Six 
days  shalt  thou  labor,  and  do  all  thy  work :  but  the  seventh 
day  is  the  sabbath  of  the  Lord  thy  God  :  in  it  thou  shalt 
not  do  any  work,  thou,  nor  thy  son,  nor  thy  daughter,  thy 
man-servant,  nor  thy  maid-servant,  nor  thy  cattle,  nor  thy 
stranger  that  is  within  thy  gates  :  for  in  six  days  the  Lord 
made  heaven  and  earth,  the  sea,  and  all  that  in  them  is, 
and  rested  the  seventh  day :  wherefore  the  Lord  blessed 
the  sabbath  day,  and  hallowed  it." 

These  words  were  written  on  stone  by  the  finger  of  God 
himself,  and  laid  up  in  the  ark,  in  token  of  their  solemn 
grandeur,  as  the  perfect  and  imperishable  law  of  Jehovah 
on  this   subject.     They  hold  a  middle   place  in  the   ten 


102  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

great  words,  between  the  things  of  God  and  man,  and  are 
a  link  of  love  which  joins  the  two  tables,  in  securing  glory 
to  God  and  blessings  to  humanity.  The  word  ''remem- 
ber," as  used  here,  implies,  to  keep  in  mind  the  day  speci- 
fied, as  one  with  which  they  were  familiar.  Although  the 
article  is  omitted  in  the  Hebrew  syntax,  the  specifying 
word  which  follows  carries  with  it  the  face  of  the  article, 
conveying  the  same  meaning  to  the  Jewish  ear,  that  the 
words,  "remember  sabbath  day,"  would  convey  to  the 
English.  When  we  take  the  Fourth  Commandment  into 
association  with  various  other  Old-Testament  passages,  we 
are  safe  in  saying  of  the  Mosaic  sabbath,  that,  — 

1.  It  covered  an  entire  day.  The  element  on  which 
God  is  legislating  here  is  time,  which  he  divides  into 
seven  parts  ;  and  the  same  number  of  hours  which  con- 
stitute a  whole  day  in  any  of  the  six  parts  form  also  the 
seventh.  That  day  was  to  be  just  as  long  as  any  other 
day;  no  more,  no  less.  Lev.  xxiii.  32,  says,  ''From  even 
unto  even  shall  ye  celebrate  your  sabbath,"  an  entire  day 
of  twenty-four  hours. 

2.  Its  negative  character  carries  with  the  words,  "7;^  it 
thou  shalt  not  do  any  work,''  the  suspejision  of  all  secular 
toil  and  business.  (i)  The  Jews  were  not  allowed  to 
travel  on  the  sabbath,  excepting  to  the  house  of  God. 
"Let  no  man  go  out  of  his  place  on  the  sabbath  day."  ^ 
(2)  They  were  not  allowed  to  go  to  market,  or  to  buy  and 
sell  goods  on  that  day,  or  to  expose  them  for  sale.  Some 
avaricious  Israelites  were  impatient  for  the  day  to  pass, 
and  said,  "When  will  the  new  moon  be  gone,  that  we 
may  sell  corn  ;  and  the  sabbath,  that  we  may  set  forth 
wheat  .'*  "  ^  But  the  law  was  inexorable.  Nehemiah  says 
that  he  testified  against  the  traders  of  Jerusalem  when 
he  saw  some  "  treading  wine-presses  on  the  sabbath,  and 
bringing  in  sheaves,  and  lading  asses ;  as  also  wine,  grapes 

1  Exod.  xvi.  29.  2  Neh.  viii.  5. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        103 

and  figs,  and  all  manner  of  burdens,  which  they  brought 
into  Jerusalem  on  the  sabbath  day."  ^  Others  brought  "  fish 
and  all  manner  of  ware,  and  sold  on  the  sabbath."  ''Then 
I  contended  with  the  nobles  of  Judah,  and  said  unto  them. 
What  evil  thing  is  this  that  ye  do,  and  profane  the  sabbath 
day  }  "  ''  When  the  gates  of  Jerusalem  began  to  be  dark 
before  the  sabbath,  I  commanded  that  the  gates  should  be 
shut,  and  charged  that  they  should  not  be  opened  till  after 
the  sabbath  ;  and  set  some  of  my  servants  at  the  gates, 
that  no  burdens  should  be  brought  in  on  the  sabbath."  He 
says  that  "the  merchants  and  sellers  of  all  kinds  of  ware" 
lodged  outside  of  the  gates  ''once  or  twice;"  but  he 
threatened  them  that  if  they  did  so  again  he  would  "  lay 
hands  "  on  them  as  a  magistrate  ;  and,  with  the  jail  in  view, 
he  says  that  "from  that  time  forth  came  they  no  more 
on  the  sabbath."  (3)  They  might  not  kindle  a  fire  on  the 
sabbath.  "  Ye  shall  kindle  no  fire  throughout  your  habi- 
tations upon  the  sabbath  day."^  (4)  They  were  not  to 
embalm  or  bury  their  dead  on  that  day.  The  women  at 
the  burial  of  Jesus  returned  from  his  tomb,  "  and  prepared 
spices  and  ointments,  and  rested  on  the  sabbath  day, 
according  to  the  commandment."  ^  (5)  They  were  not 
allowed  to  plough  their  land  or  gather  their  harvest  on 
the  sabbath,  however  plausible  the  necessity  might  appear. 
"  On  the  seventh  day  thou  shalt  rest ;  in  earing  time  (the 
time  of  ploughing)  and  harvest  thou  shalt  rest."* 

3.  The  positive  side  of  the  Fourth  Commajidment  devotes 
the  day  to  absolute  rest  and  religious  uses.  All  pleasure- 
seeking,  diversion,  and  idleness  were  to  be  cast  aside,  to 
make  it  a  day  of  pre-eminent  sanctity.  The  law  "hal- 
lowed "  it,  that  is,  made  it  God's  own  day  ;  for  the  leading 
thought  in  hallowing  is,  to  separate,  to  consecrate.  It  was 
time  "blessed"  and  "sanctified,"  made  sacred  to  sacred 

1  Neh.  xiii.  15-21.  2  Exod.  xxxv.  3. 

8  Lukexxiii.  54-56.  *  Exod.  xxxiv,  21. 


104  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

purposes.  The  solar,  or  sun-dividing  mark,  was  not  a 
radical  and  broad  enough  line  of  demarkation  to  character- 
ize it  from  its  fellows.  It  must  stand  alone,  be  ''kept 
holy."  "  Ye  shall  reverence  my  sabbaths."  "■  Not  doing 
thine  own  ways,  nor  finding  thine  own  pleasure,  nor  speak- 
ing thine  own  words."  ^ 

4.  This  sanctity  was  to  evince  itself  in  acts  of  public  wor- 
ship. "The  seventh  day  is  a  holy  convocation."  ^  This 
phrase,  "holy  convocation,"  is  always  used  to  designate 
the  religious  gatherings  of  Israel,  in  distinction  from  their 
political  and  other  gatherings.  Then,  special  sacrifices 
were  to  be  offered  in  the  sanctuary  on  the  sabbath.  "  On 
the  sabbath  day  two  lambs  of  the  first  year,  without  spot, 
and  two  tenth  deals  of  flour,  for  a  burnt  offering,  mingled 
with  oil,  and  the  drink  offering  thereof.  This  is  the  burnt 
offering  of  every  sabbath,  besides  the  continual  burnt  of- 
fering." ^  Particular  force  is  given  to  the  injunction,  "Ye 
shall  reverence  my  sanctuary,"  by  specifying  the  particu- 
lar gate  of  the  sanctuary  which  should  be  used  for  these 
double  sacrifices  on  the  sabbath.  "  Thus  saith  the  Lord 
God ;  The  gate  of  the  inner  court  that  looketh  towards  the 
east  shull  be  shut  the  six  working  days  ;  but  on  the  seventh 
it  shall  be  opened.  .  .  .  And  the  prince  shall  enter  by  the 
way  of  the  porch  of  that  gate  without,  and  shall  stand  by 
the  post  of  the  gate,  and  the  priests  shall  prepare  his  burnt 
offering  and  his  peace  offerings,  and  he  shall  worship  at 
the  threshold  of  the  gate  :  then  he  shall  go  forth,  but  the 
gate  shall  not  be  shut  until  the  evening.  Likewise  the 
people  of  the  land  shall  worship  at  the  door  of  this  gate  in 
the  sabbaths."*  The  New  Testament  throws  light  upon 
the  Jewish  sabbath  worship  in  the  synagogue,  after  the 
captivity.  Jesus,  "as  his  custom  was,  went  into  the  syn- 
agogue on  the  sabbath  day,  and  stood  up  to  read."^      And 

1  Isa.  Iviii.  13.  2  Lev.  xxiii.  3.  8  Num.  xxxiii.  9,  10. 

4  Ezek.  xlvi.  1-13.         ^  Luke  iv.  16. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE   WORD   OF  GOD.       105 


the  Apostle  Paul  says,  ''  Moses  of  old  time  hath  in  every 
city  them  that  preach  him,  being  read  in  the  synagogues 
every  sabbath  day.''^  Reading  the  Scriptures  was  a  part 
of  this  worship. 

5.  TJiere  are  hitimatiojis  that  the  family  engaged  in  so- 
cial as  well  as  public  ivorship  on  the  sabbath.  The  home 
is  put  in  conjunction  with  the  **holy  convocation,"  in  the 
words,^  ''  It  is  the  sabbath  of  the  Lord  in  all  your  dwell- 
ings." The  family  tie,  which  is  mentioned  so  carefully 
in  the  Fourth  Commandment,  seems  also  to  indicate  this 
household  privilege,  as  belonging  to  the  whole  family,  — 
an  inheritance  of  rest,  comfort,  instruction,  and  worship. 
This  right  is  secured  to  labor  as  well  as  relationship  ;  the 
"man-servant,"  the  *' maid-servant,"  the  ''stranger,"  as 
well  as  "thou,"  "and  thy  son  and  thy  daughter." 

6.  Sabbath  observance  was  enforced  by  an  appeal  to  He- 
brew gratitude.  When  the  commandment  said  that  the 
Lord  "rested  on  the  seventh  day,"  it  did  not  carry  the 
gross  idea  to  the  Israelite  that  he  was  weary,  and  needed 
repose  after  the  work  of  creation,  but,  that  he  had 
brought  his  work  to  a  definite  end,  and  had  ceased  to 
work.  And  in  the  same  sense  he  summoned  their  better 
nature  to  the  observance  of  the  sabbath,  by  the  additional 
consideration,  that,  when  they  left  Egypt,  their  toils  of 
bondage  were  consummated,  and  they  rested  from  bond- 
age. They  were  to  commemorate  that  completed  work  in 
the  sabbath.^  "  Thou  wast  a  servant  in  the  land  of  Egypt, 
and  the  Lord  thy  God  brought  thee  hence,  through  a 
mighty  hand  and  by  a  stretched-out  arm:  therefore  the 
Lord  thy  God  commanded  thee  to  keep  the  sabbath  day." 
This  makes  their  sabbath  not  only  a  commemoration  of 
creation,  but  also  a  national  monument  to  their  personal 
and  national  liberties.  This  beneficent  humanity  made 
Jehovah  not  only  the  Lord  of  the  sabbath  by  creation,  but 

1  Acts  XV.  21.  2  Lev.  xxiii.  3.  8  Deut.  v.  15. 


1 06  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

by  the  endowment  of  a  great  nation  with  all  its  distin- 
guishing privileges  and  rights.  Eminent  writers  have 
claimed  that  their  slavery  ended  in  Egypt  on  the  sabbath 
day,  and  that  therefore  they  were  to  celebrate  it  as  the 
time  of  a  new  national  creation,  with  an  animated  and  ele- 
vated gratitude.  Their  new-found  liberties  made  it  jubi- 
lant with  honors,  humanities,  and  enjoyments.  It  was  to 
remove  their  commonwealth  as  far  as  possible  from  the 
grinding  toils  of  a  sabbath-less  Egypt.^  **  See  that  ye 
keep  my  sabbath,  because  it  is  a  sign  between  me  and 
you  in  all  your  generations."  The  doctrine  that  the  sab- 
bath was  a  "sign"  to  the  Jews,  taught  that  their  exodus 
from  slavery  was  followed  by  the  restful  sabbath,  just  as 
God  himself  ceased  from  the  work  of  creation  on  the  sab- 
bath. With  this  grateful  and  cheering  view,  the  weekly 
returning  "sign"  must  have  thrilled  every  household,  for 
the  sabbath  was  made  one  of  the  great  social  influences 
which  kept  the  national  sentiment  of  freedom  alive  and 
fresh,  removing  from  the  home  all  that  was  gloomy  and 
austere.  The  "sign"  of  the  sabbath  filled  every  family 
with  a  free,  breathing  patriotism ;  for  its  sanctity  chas- 
tened every  feeling,  filled  every  house  with  the  cheerful 
song  of  deliverance,  and  knit  the  circle  into  friendship  and 
the  serenity  of  love.  And  this  happiness  was  to  be  abid- 
ing ;  for  the  Lord  said  to  them,^  "  From  one  new  moon  to 
another,  and  from  one  sabbath  to  another,  shall  all  flesh 
come  to  w^orship  before  me,  saith  the  Lord."  Creation 
and  liberty  were  the  joint  note  of  their  sabbath. 

7.  yehovah  deprecated  sabbath-breaking  as  a  griezwtis  sin, 
and  severely  punished  the  offender?  "  Ye  shall  keep  the 
sabbath  holy.  Every  one  that  defileth  it  shall  surely  be 
put  to  death.  .  .  .  Six. days  may  work  be  done,  but  in  the 
seventh  is  the  sabbath  of  rest,  holy  to  the  Lord :  whoever 
doeth  any  work  in  the  sabbath  day,  he  shall  surely  be  put 

1  Exod.  xxxi.  13.  2  isa.  Ixvi.  23.  8  Exod.  xxxi.  14,  15. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD,        lO/ 

to  death."  The  death-penalty  was  inflicted  on  one  man 
who  desecrated  the  day  :  ^  **  All  the  congregation  brought 
him  without  the  camp,  and  stoned  him  with  stones,  and  he 
died  ;  as  the  Lord  commanded  Moses."  Nay,  the  Lord 
threatened  the  very  existence  of  the  Hebrew  state,  if  the 
nation  profaned  the  sabbath  i^  **  If  ye  will  not  hearken 
unto  me  to  hallow  the  sabbath  day,  and  not  to  bear  the 
burden  even  entering  in  at  the  gates  of  Jerusalem  on  the 
sabbath  day,  then  will  I  kindle  a  fire  in  the  gates  thereof, 
and  it  shall  devour  the  palaces  of  Jerusalem,  and  it  shall 
not  be  quenched."  This  particular  sin  is  one  of  the 
counts  in  the  indictment  on  which  his  ancient  people  were 
sent  into  captivity,  as  numerous  passages  from  the  proph- 
ets show,  both  before  and  after  that  calamity.  When  the 
sabbath  was  honored,  kept  "holy,"  and  held  as  the 
''delight"  of  the  people,  the  nation  prospered  politically; 
but,  when  it  was  prostituted,  stern  retribution  followed. 
Nehemiah  says  that  after  the  return  from  captivity  he^ 
"  contended  with  the  nobles  of  Judah,  and  said  unto  them, 
What  evil  thing  is  this  that  ye  do,  and  profane  the  sabbath 
day  .'*  Did  not  our  fathers  thus,  and  did  not  our  God 
bring  all  this  evil  upon  us,  and  upon  this  city  1  "Yet  ye 
bring  more  wrath  upon  Israel  by  profaning  the  sabbath." 
Much  has  been  said  against  the  moral  obligation  to  per- 
petuate the  sabbath  under  the  provisions  of  the  Fourth 
Commandment,  on  the  ground  that  these  terrible  adjuncts 
imposed  under  the  Mosaic  law,  must  have  made  the  insti- 
tution temporary  and  local.  But  the  abolition  of  these 
civil  penalties  can  in  no  way  have  set  aside  the  moral  prin- 
ciple which  conserves  the  fitness  of  the  sabbath  for  all  its 
humane  and  religious  designs.  And  therefore  it  becomes 
an  important  question  :  Why  Jehovah  looked  upon  all 
sabbath  desecration  as  so  great  a  wickedness }  Let  us 
examine  this  point  for  a  moment. 

1  Num.  XV.  36.  2  jer.  xvii.  27.  8  Neh.  xiii.  17. 


1 08  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

To  begin  with,  sabbath-breaking  was  not  the  only  crime 
for  which  death  was  inflicted  under  the  Jewish  theocracy. 
Adultery,  murder,  and  disobedience  to  parents,  were  all 
capital  crimes  under  that  order  of  jurisprudence  :  because 
each  of  these  undermined  the  honor  and  safety  of  soci- 
ety, while  the  Hebrews  continued  to  be  a  nation  and  a 
theocracy.  But  when  their  nationality  came  to  an  end, 
temporal  death  was  no  longer  judicially  inflicted  for  sab- 
bath-breaking, because  legislation  on  the  civil  sabbath 
dropped,  with  the  other  rights  to  inflict  the  death-penalty, 
into  the  hands  of  the  state ;  while  the  religious  sabbath 
fell  back  upon  the  eternal  principles  of  morality,  which 
had  governed  the  sabbath  in  pre-Mosaic  times.  The  death- 
penalty  for  the  violation  of  the  sabbath  was  a  part  and 
parcel  of  the  political  and  local  regulations  of  the  theoc- 
racy. While  Jehovah  was  the  only  Lawgiver  of  the  Jews, 
he  constituted  the  sabbath  a  civil  institution  as  well  as  a 
religious  obligation ;  and  hence,  its  desecration  was  an  act 
of  downright  treason  against  their  only  King.  He  had 
but  recently  brought  them  out  of  the  slavery  of  centuries. 
He  had  given  them  the  lands  of  those  who  practised  poly- 
theism, and  worshipped  false  gods ;  he  had  made  their  law 
the  depository  of  a  pure  theism  and  worship,  and  he 
had  based  all  their  national  politics  upon  moral  law. 
Their  sabbath  was  both  a  sign  and  a  test  of  his  kingship  : 
therefore  he  determined  that  if  his  own  people,  for  whom 
he  had  done  so  much,  should  publicly  insult  him,  by  set- 
ting that  covenant  sign  at  defiance  before  the  mocking 
heathen,  their  bold  presumption  should  be  punished  with 
the  utmost  rigor.  Such  conduct  flaunted  defiance  in  the 
face  of  Jehovah :  it  was  an  act  of  Deicide,  and  treasonable 
in  the  highest  degree.  For  this  reason,  offenders  endured 
these  heavy  penalties  when  they  worshipped  idols,  blas- 
phemed his  name,  disregarded  the  obligations  to  parents, 
and  violated  the  sabbath,  as  well  as  when  they  took 
human  life. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.       109 

Now,  take  the  case  of  the  man  who  was  stoned  to  death 
for  gathering  sticks  on  the  sabbath.  It  evidently  came 
under  this  daring  character,  and  his  punishment  was  a 
judicial  sentence.  This  man  sinned  neither  through  igno- 
rance nor  infirmity,  mistake  nor  impulse :  if  he  had,  some 
of  the  sacrifices  ordained  in  such  cases  would  have  atoned 
for  him.  John  Selden  takes  the  ground  that  he  was  cut- 
ting up  the  roots  of  trees,  rather  than  ''gathering  sticks  ; " 
and  the  Hebrew  word  lyiJ^pD  may  mean  "chipping,"  or 
''splitting  wood,"  as  Arnheim  suggests.  In  that  case, 
his  act  defined  a  direct  and  positive  labor  on  the  sabbath. 
God  had  put  him  to  this  test  of  allegiance,  and,  hav- 
ing deliberately  chosen  to  commit  high  treason,  he  was 
given  over  to  the  nation  to  be  dealt  with  in  this  summary 
manner  ;  and  the  whole  congregation,  for  the  welfare  of 
the  commonwealth,  executed  the  sentence  of  death  to  ex- 
piate his  political  crime  against  their  King.  The  relation 
of  God  to  the  Jews  was  not  general  and  spiritual  only,  but 
temporal  and  national  also  :  it  was  such  a  relation  as  he 
has  never  assumed  towards  any  other  nation.  He  was 
their  legal  and  political  King,  as  well  as  their  chosen 
divinity :  therefore  his  right  to  his  own  sacred  day,  as 
their  monarch,  was  inviolable.  Where,  as  slaves,  they  had 
no  day  to  call  their  own,  he  had  given  them  six  in  each 
week,  only  reserving  one  for  himself ;  and  the  sabbath- 
breaker  would  deliberately  rob  him  of  that.  He  blessed 
them  and  protected  them,  and  guarded  all  their  sacred 
liberties,  after  he  had  become  the  acknowledsred  Founder 
of  their  nation  ;  and  he  beneficently  intertwined  the  sab- 
bath with  all  their  temporal,  political,  and  religious  insti- 
tutions ;  and  so  most  justly  made  it  the  channel  for  the 
public  recognition  of  his  magisterial  authority  as  their 
only  Lord  and  Lawgiver. 

8.  yehovah  enforced  the  sanctity  of  the  sabbath  by  re- 
zvarding  those   who  kept  it  holy.     For  this   purpose   he 


1 1 0  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

renewed  the  original  benediction  wliicb  he  pronounced 
upon  the  sabbath  again  and  again.  *'  Blessed  is  the  man 
that  doeth  this,  and  the  son  of  man  that  layeth  hold  on 
it ;  that  keepeth  the  sabbath  from  polluting  it.  For  thus 
saith  the  Lord  unto  the  eunuchs  that  keep  my  sabbaths, 
and  choose  the  things  that  please  me,  and  take  hold  of 
my  covenant,  even  unto  them  will  I  give  in  mine  house 
and  within  my  walls  a  place  and  a  name  better  than  of 
sons  and  of  daughters."^  "If  thou  turn  away  thy  foot 
from  the  sabbath,  and  from  doing  thy  pleasure  on  my  holy 
day,  and  call  the  sabbath  a  delight,  the  holy  of  the  Lord, 
honorable,  and  shalt  honor  him,  ...  I  will  cause  thee  to 
ride  upon  the  high  places  of  the  earth,  and  feed  thee  with 
the  heritage  of  Jacob  thy  father."  ^ 

9.  Sometimes  tJiere  zvas  a  perfect  rebo7ind  from  the  wil- 
ful non-observance  of  tJie  sabbath,  amongst  tJie  Jews,  to 
the  most  siLperstitioiis  and  fanatical  observance  of  the  day. 
But  this  did  not  occur  until  the  spirit  of  the  institution 
had  been  entirely  lost  in  its  letter.  By  tradition  and  the 
teachings  of  the  Talmud,  they  added  all  sorts  of  fantastical 
provisions  to  the  commands  of  God  concerning  the  exter- 
nal observance  of  the  day.  They  would  not  even  defend 
themselves  against  an  invading  army  on  the  sabbath,^  nor 
countenance  the  use  of  the  healing  art  for  the  restoration 
of  the  sick.*  If  an  ^gg  was  laid  on  the  sabbath,  it  might 
not  be  eaten,  because  it  was  "prepared"  by  the  hen  in 
sacred  time.^  There  were  many  similar  extravagances. 
To  some  extent  this  over-scrupulous  abuse  of  plain  ordi- 
nances had  been  foreseen  and  provided  for ;  as,  for  exam- 
ple, in  the  case  of  sabbath  military  guards.  "  A  third 
part  of  you  that  enter  in  on  the  sabbath,  even  they  shall 
keep  watch  of  the  king's  house.  And  two  parts  of  all 
that  go  forth   on  the  sabbath,  even  they  shall  keep  the 

1  Isa.  Ivi.  1-7.  2  isa.  Iviii.  13.  3  i  Mace.  i.  11-15,  39-45. 

*  John  V.  18.  5  Smith's  Bib.  Die,  art.  "Pharisees." 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        Ill 

watch  of  the  house  of  the  Lord  about  the  king.  And  the 
captains  over  the  hundreds  did  according  to  all  things 
that  Jehoiada  the  priest  commanded  ;  and  they  took  every 
man  his  men  that  were  to  come  in  on  the  sabbath  with 
them  that  should  go  out  on  the  sabbath."  ^ 

There  can  be  no  doubt  from  the  teachings  of  the  New 
Testament,  that  the  Old-Testament  sabbath  was  a  type  of 
better  things  to  come ;  but  the  Jews  did  not  so  understand 
it  at  the  time,  and  did  not  observe  it  for  that  reason,  or  in 
that  spirit.  This  great  application  of  the  sabbath  is  a 
New-Testament  revelation.  But  the  sabbath  of  the  Old 
Testament  appears  to  have  laid  its  grounds  and  methods 
of  influence  chiefly,  if  not  entirely,  in  the  principles  and 
modes  of  operation  indicated  in  the  above  observations. 

1  2  Kings  xi.  5,  7,  9. 


1 1 2  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


CHRIST'S   CONNECTION  WITH  THE   SABBATH. 

BY   REV.    HENRY   W.    WARREN,    D.D.,    OF   PHILADELPHIA. 

The  theme  naturally  divides  itself  into  four  parts  :  viz., 
I.,  the  ideal  sabbath  as  enjoyed  by  God,  and  communi- 
cated to  men  ;  11. ,  the  perverted  Pharisaic  institution 
afterwards  called  sabbath  ;  III.,  Christ's  connection  with 
that  then  existent  institution  ;  and,  IV.,  his  relation  to  the 
sabbath  subsequent  to  his  life  on  earth. 

The  initial  idea  of  the  sabbath,  as  of  all  things  else,  is 
derived  from  God  (Gen.  ii.  2).  That  text  takes  pains  to 
repeat  that  God  rested  from  the  work  that  he  had  made, 
not  from  all  work.  The  word  shabath  means  resting  from 
the  work  immediately  preceding,  because  now  complete. 
There  had  been  struggle  with  chaos,  formlessness,  and 
darkness.  The  result  of  divine  power  was  order,  beauty, 
light;  and  the  divine  judgment  said,  "It  is  very  good." 
God  saw  all  things  conformed  to  his  idea,  ready  for  finer 
developments,  and  ceased  from  the  work  he  had  done. 
For  six  days  he  had  ploughed  with  earthquakes,  terraced 
with  mountain-ranges,  put  oceans  for  reservoirs,  appointed 
winds  and  clouds  to  water  continents,  had  seeded  the  earth 
for  flowers  and  fruit,  and  had  created  millions  of  sentient 
creatures  to  enjoy  them.  That  cycle  was  complete.  Now 
he  needed  only  to  preserve  and  enjoy.  That  is  the  first 
part  of  his  sabbath,  a  blissful  contemplation  and  preserva- 
tion of  a  material  universe.  Well  do  we  sing  of  God 
amid  the  grand  march  of  shining  stars. 

"  Thy  temple  is  the  arch 

Of  yon  unmeasured  sky ; 
Thy  sabbath,  the  stupendous  march 
Of  vast  eternity." 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        II3 

But  we  have  a  very  incomplete  idea  of  God's  sabbath, 
unless  we  realize  that  he  therein  entered  upon  a  new  and 
higher  kind  of  work;  a  work  moral  and  spiritual,  impress- 
ing his  nature  on  souls,  as  he  had  impressed  his  power  on 
matter ;  a  work  distinct  from  all  previous  work,  and  but 
for  which  no  previous  work  would  have  been  undertaken. 
This  communication  of  personal  holiness  and  power  to 
spiritual  children  is  God's  rest-day  work,  going  on  through 
thousands  of  years  as  one  day;  and  it  was  of  this  especially 
that  the  Saviour  said,  "  My  Father  worketh  hitherto,"  or 
up  to  now.  And  this  constitutes  the  clearest  and  sub- 
limest  illustration  of  v^hat  the  true  sabbath  is,  and  for 
what  it  is  appropriately  used. 

After  the  exodus  the  term  "sabbath"  came  to  be  applied 
mainly,  if  not  altogether,  to  a  certain  definite  keeping  of 
the  seventh  day  of  the  week.      WJiat  was  that  sabbath  f 

In  order  that  there  might  be  a  cessation  from  work,  it 
was  first  enjoined,  "Six  days  shalt  thou  labor,"  an  injunc- 
tion too  apt  to  be  forgotten.  It  was  then  ordered,  nega- 
tively, that  the  people  should  not  light  a  fire  in  their  dwell- 
ings, nor  go  out  of  the  camp  to  gather  manna  nor  to  do 
any  work.  Infraction  of  this  law  was  punished,  in  one 
instance  at  least,  with  death. 

The  sabbath  was  an  enjoined  rest,  provided  by  God's 
authority,  not  only  for  the  Israelites,  but  also  for  servants 
and  even  for  beasts.  It  was  designed  to  prevent  the 
emancipated  Israelites  from  practising  the  hard  and  bitter 
lessons  they  had  learned  as  slaves,  on  those  who  should 
afterwards  serve  them.  It  was  an  assertion  that  servants 
and  slaves  had  rights,  as  well  as  masters,  and  that  God 
designed  to  vindicate  them  in  those  rights.  It  was  an 
attempt  on  God's  part  to  recuperate  the  vigor  of  a  part  of 
the  race  that  sin  had  so  frightfully  damaged,  and  restore 
it  to  something  of  its  pristine  vigor. 

Besides  these  negative  regulations  for  the  people,  it  was 


114  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

positively  enjoined  that  the  priests  should  double  the 
laborious  and  difficult  sacrifices  of  the  tabernacle  on  this 
day,  and  that  they  should  bake  new  show-bread,  and  place 
it  on  the  table  for  the  week  to  come.  It  is  easy  to  see 
that  the  restrictive  rules  about  labor  and  lighting  fires  did 
not  apply  to  religious  service.  Instead  of  saying  as  the 
Jews  did,  that  there  was  no  sabbath  in  holy  things,  we 
would  say  that  in  holy  things  it  was  a  perpetual  sabbath, 
and  that  for  the  worship  of  God  and  the  sanctification  of 
men  all  possible  labor  was  devout  sabbath-keeping. 

When  we  come  to  the  great  religious  revival  under  Ne- 
hemiah,  after  the  Babylonish  captivity,  we  find  the  people 
gathered  on  a  holy  day,  to  hear  preaching,  or  expositions  of 
scriptures,  by  Ezra.  They  were  told  not  to  mourn  and 
weep,  but  go  their  way,  eat  the  fat,  drink  the  sweet,  and 
send  portions  to  those  for  whom  nothing  was  prepared ; 
"  for  this  day  is  holy  unto  the  Lord  :  neither  be  ye  sorry, 
for  the  joy  of  the  Lord  is  your  strength."  Hence  rose  the 
custom  of  giving  feasts  on  the  sabbath.  To  these  the  rich 
and  poor  were  invited,  or  were  free  to  come.  Altogether 
it  was  a  day  of  social  joy,  religious  worship,  and  the  best 
attainable  rest,  that  is,  a  perfect  rest  from  secular  toil  for 
gain,  and  a  refreshing  labor,  inspired  by  the  spirit  of  love, 
for  the  religious  profit  of  others. 

But  in  the  course  of  time  this  ideal  sabbath  formed  upon 
,the  model  of  God's  rest-day  was  changed.  The  Pharisaic 
spirit,  which  becomes  intensely  religious  in  some  points  as 
it  becomes  intensely  wicked  in  others,  that  offers  to  God 
anise  and  cummin,  and  to  its  own  avarice  the  widows' 
houses  it  devours,  set  about  making  the  rest-day  one  of 
torture.  They  had  read  in  Jeremiah,  "Take  heed  to  your- 
selves, that  ye  bear  no  burden  on  the  sabbath  day,"  refer- 
ring to  traffic  through  the  gates  of  Jerusalem.  So  they 
decided  that  men  might  wear  shoes  not  nailed,  as  a  protec- 
.tion  for  their  feet,  but  that  nailed  shoes  were  a  burden,  and 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        II5 

he  who  had  only  such  must  go  barefoot.  They  might  not 
carry  a  fan  to  drive  away  flies,  for  that  would  be  a  burden. 
A  handkerchief  might  be  worn  as  a  girdle,  or  pinned  to 
any  part  of  one's  apparel,  and  so  be  a  garment;  but,  if 
loose  in  the  pocket,  it  was  a  forbidden  burden.  They  read 
that  Moses  enjoined  every  man  to  abide  in  his  place  on 
that  day,  and  not  go  out  of  his  place.  So  they  set  about 
enlarging  his  place,  so  that  he  could  go,  and  not  disobey. 
They  said  a  man's  place  extended  two  thousand  paces  in 
every  direction,  and  that  far  he  might  journey  on  the  sab- 
bath day.  But,  if  a  man  found  himself  more  than  two 
thousand  paces  from  his  home  on  Friday  night  when  the 
sun  went  down,  there  must  he  abide  over  the  seventh  day, 
whether  he  had  food  and  shelter,  or  not.  Nevertheless,  if 
a  man  had  carried  food  two  thousand  paces  from  home  on 
the  sixth  day,  he  might  on  the  sabbath  make  that  a  new 
point  of  departure  for  another  sabbath-day's  journey. 
They  read  in  the  commandment,  "  In  it  thou  shalt  not  do 
any  work."  So  they  enacted  that  men  must  not  walk  the 
permitted  journey  on  the  grass,  lest  they  do  threshing; 
and  must  not  catch  troublesome  fleas,  lest  they  do  hunting. 
Thus  they  laid  burdens  on  men's  shoulders  grievous  to  be 
borne,  but,  by  applying  the  same  farcical  reasoning,  man- 
aged to  exempt  themselves  from  touching  these  burdens 
with  one  of  their  fingers.  It  was  an  attempt  to  please 
God  by  splitting  the  hairs  of  one's  head,  instead  of  serving 
him  with  the  heart.  Judaism  was  fast  lapsing  into  the 
Pagan  idea  that  God  was  to  be  pleased  by  bodily  dis- 
comfort and  torture,  and  was  teaching  men  that  he  was 
vindictively  exact  about  straining  out  gnats,  and  utterly 
unmindful  of  swallowed  camels ;  that  he  was  painfully 
precise  about  insignificant  details,  but  regardless  of  men's 
passing  by  justice,  righteousness,  and  the  weightier  matters 
of  the  law. 

To  such  a  farce  of  sabbath-keeping,  both  ludicrous  and 


Il6  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

wicked,  came  the  Lord  of  the  sabbath.  We  shall  find  in 
his  words  and  deeds  the  true  ideal  of  the  proper  keeping 
of  the  day. 

We  notice  first  of  all  that  even  in  his  preparatory  min- 
istry it  was  his  custom  to  go  into  the  synagogues,  and 
expound  the  word  of  God.  He  would  have  made  the  day 
memorable  above  all  the  concentrated  Fourths  of  July  of 
all  nations,  if  he  had  done  nothing  else  than  to  announce 
at  Nazareth  that  epitome  of  the  objects  of  his  coming: 
"The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  because  he  hath 
anointed  me  to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor ;  he  hath 
sent  me  to  heal  the  broken-hearted,  to  preach  deliverance 
to  the  captives,  and  recovering  of  sight  to  the  blind,  to  set 
at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised,  to  preach  the  acceptable 
year  of  the  Lord."  All  the  ages  do  well  to  keep  holy  the 
day  that  brings  such  blessed  declarations  to  a  groaning 
creation. 

We  observe  secondly  that  Christ  attended  at  least  one 
of  the  feasts  men  were  wont  to  give  on  that  day.  Proba- 
bly the  meat  was  that  of  a  slain  sacrifice.  Jesus  did  not 
rebuke  the  custom,  and  he  made  it  an  occasion  of  healing 
the  sick,  teaching  good  manners  and  the  true  humility. 

We  find  thirdly  that  Christ  was  accustomed  to  walk 
about  the  city  and  fields  on  this  day.  We  find  him  with 
a  multitude  near  the  pool  of  Bethesda.  It  was  no  place 
of  religious  gathering,  except  what  he  made  it  by  his  holy 
presence.  But  into  that  idle  crowd  he  brought  the  power 
of  holy  words  and  deeds.  He  said  to  one  who  had  been 
an  invalid  thirty-eight  years,  *' Wiliest  thou  to  be  made 
whole  t  Rise,  take  up  thy  bed,  and  walk."  He  settled 
the  whole  question  of  forbidden  work  just  as  Nehemiah 
did  nearly  five  hundred  years  before.  He  forbade  tread- 
ing wine-presses,  bringing  in  sheaves,  lading  asses,  i.e., 
ordinary  work  from  the  ordinary  motive,  hire  or  gain. 
The  Pharisees  were  alert ;  but  in  the  frenzy  of  their  sab- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE   WORD   OF  GOD.       I17 

batarianism  they  let  the  offending  burden-bearer  go,  that 
they  might  wreak  their  hate  by  putting  to  death  the  one 
giving  the  command.  Christ's  defence  at  once  vaults  to 
the  highest  authority,  "■  My  Father  worketh  up  to  now,  and 
I  work."  The  Father  constantly  fills  all  spheres  of  being 
with  himself.  And  the  Son  by  the  word  of  his  power  con- 
tinually upholds  all  things,  and  by  him  all  things  stand 
together :  all  the  planets  fly,  vegetative  processes  go  for- 
ward, life  sings  and  leaps  its  happy  round  of  existence. 
And  from  both  proceeds  the  Holy  Spirit,  flooding  all 
spiritual  beings  with  a  perpetual  sabbath  influence. 

Indeed,  Christ  did  work  on  the  sabbath.  He  did  no 
less  than  seven  or  eight  of  his  great  miracles  on  that  day. 
He  did  them  on  the  sabbath  defiantly,  ostentatiously,  when 
there  was  no  special  reason  for  haste.  The  Jews  said, 
**  Come  on  one  of  the  six  days,  and  be  healed,  and  not  on 
the  sabbath  day  ; "  but,  just  to  pour  his  contempt  on  their 
style  of  sabbath-keeping,  Christ  wrought  these  cures  on 
the  sabbath.  He  healed  the  demoniac  in  the  synagogue 
at  Capernaum,  rebuked  the  fever  of  Peter's  wife's  mother, 
he  made  whole  the  man's  withered  hand,  loosed  the 
daughter  of  Abraham  whom  Satan  had  bound  for  eigh- 
teen years,  and  cured  the  man  of  dropsy  in  the  home  of 
one  of  the  chief  Pharisees.  And  it  was  the  light  of  the 
blessed  sabbath  day  that  first  reached  the  darkened  soul 
of  the  man  who  was  born  blind.  I  greatly  fear  that 
Christ's  followers,  in  their  Jewish  ideas  of  no  work  on  the 
sabbath,  forget  the  sublimity  of  Christ's  work  for  the  good 
of  the  souls  and  bodies  of  men.  Christ  cites  the  case  of 
the  priests  who  labor  on  the  sabbath  and  are  blameless, 
goes  over  a  masterly  argument,  and  reaches  the  sublime 
conclusion,  **  Wherefore  it  is  lawful  to  do  well  on  the  sab- 
bath day." 

It  is  not  to  be  thought  for  a  moment,  that  Christ  said 
aught  against  the  day  as  a  divine  institution ;  but  his  hot- 


Il8  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

test  anger  burned  against  the  men  who  perverted  mercy 
to  cruelty,  and  exalted  an  institution  above  the  man. 
Hence  he  thunders  at  them,  ''  The  sabbath  was  made  for 
man,  not  man  for  the  sabbath."  Institutions  are  given  to 
be  kept,  modified,  or  abolished  if  need  be,  for  man's  good; 
and  not  man  to  be  stretched  or  mutilated  on  the  Procrus- 
tean bed  of  an  institution.  The  Son  of  man  is  lord  of  the 
sabbath,  and  in  that  high  capacity  he  illustrates  its  proper 
observance  as  has  been  detailed.  He  saved  all  the  Mosaic 
rest-day,  but  tore  off  the  grave-clothes  with  which  they  had 
bound  it.  When  the  Christian  Church  shall  have  truly 
copied  the  sabbath-keeping  of  its  Lord,  no  lonely  patient 
in  the  hospital  shall  lack  the  visit  of  a  friend,  no  worthy 
poor  for  whom  no  portion  is  prepared  shall  lack  his  food, 
and  probably  no  crowd  of  idlers  in  the  city  park  will  lack 
its  faithful  Christian  missionaries.  And  unless  we  use  the 
day  more  for  missionary  work,  and  less  for  ecstasy  and 
mental  titillation,  there  is  great  occasion  to  fear  it  will  be 
taken  away  from  us. 

Christ  also  showed  his  lordship  over  the  sabbath  by 
changing  the  day  of  its  observance.  As  the  Creator  hal- 
lowed the  day  on  which  he,  having  finished  creative,  com- 
menced spiritual  work,  so  Christ  hallowed  the  day  on 
which  he,  having  finished  re-creative  work,  commenced 
the  eternal  sabbath  of  spiritual  development. 

We  find  ourselves  keeping  another  day  for  a  rest-day. 
Has  it  any  divine  authority,  or  is  it  a  matter  of  individual 
choice }  The  only  authority  that  concerns  us  to-day  is 
whether  Christ  gave  this  new  day  for  man's  keeping.  I 
confess  there  is  no  definite  command  of  his  on  record  to 
change  the  day.  But  we  do  find  custom  which  seems 
based  on  sufficient  authority.  It  is  clear  that  the  apostles 
immediately  commenced  to  keep  the  first  day  of  the  week 
in  that  manner  in  which  they  had  previously  observed  the 
seventh.     Seven   texts,  or   instances,  can  be   adduced  in 


THE   SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        1 19 

proof  of  this.  Neither  the  apostles  nor  the  early  fathers 
assert  that  Christ  changed  the  sabbath  from  the  seventh 
to  the  first  day,  but  circumstances  all  point  that  way. 
On  the  first  day  of  the  week  Christ  rose  from  the  dead : 
his  work,  greater  than  speaking  a  world  from  nought,  was 
finished.  He  appeared  five  times  that  day  to  his  follow- 
ers. On  the  following  first  day  he  appeared  again  ;  and 
there  is  no  record  that  he  appeared  to  them  in  the  inter- 
vening six  days.  Then  on  the  day  of  Pentecost,  that  day 
of  spiritual  power  worthy  of  perpetual  celebration,  Christ 
once  more  distinguished  the  first  day  of  the  week. 

At  Troas,  years  after,  Paul  abode  seven  days  ;  and  upon 
the  first  day  of  the  week,  when  the  disciples  came  together, 
Paul  preached  unto  them.  That  it  was  the  custom  of  the 
early  Church  to  gather  on  the  first  day  of  the  week,  is  still 
further  illustrated  by  Paul's  exhortation  to  the  Corinthians, 
to  make  their  collection  for  the  poor  on  that  day.  St. 
John  said  of  himself,  that  he  was  in  the  Spirit  on  the 
Lord's  Day.  This  was  the  first  day  of  the  week.  Thus  it 
was  the  practice  of  the  disciples  of  the  Lord  to  keep  holy 
the  day  of  his  sabbath  rest,  the  day  of  his  resurrection 
from  the  dead.  They  not  only  did  this,  but  Paul  wrote  to 
the  Colossians  not  to  allow  any  man  to  judge  them  — 
the  early  Christians  —  in  regard  to  keeping  the  former 
sabbath  or  the  seventh  day.  He  says  the  Jewish  sabbath 
was  a  shadow  of  which  the  body  is  Christ. 

We  find  also  the  early  fathers  for  two  centuries  accept- 
ing without  dispute  or  question  the  Lord's  Day,  and  doing 
therein  their  holy  duties,  while  the  seventh  day  gradually 
fell  into  the  same  estimation  in  which  other  days  were 
held.  It  is  a  fair  inference,  that,  while  the  whole  Church 
obeyed  the  divine  commandment  to  remember  the  rest-day 
and  keep  it  holy,  they  followed  the  indication  of  Christ 
himself  in  regard  to  what  particular  day  should  be  so 
observed. 


120  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

The  main  point  to  be  noticed  in  Christ's  connection  with 
the  sabbath  is  the  fact  that  he  recognized  its  authority, 
and  raised  it  to  a  .higher  range  of  honor  and  use.  He 
stood  over  its  grave,  and  authoritatively  bid  it  come  forth. 
He  stripped  it  of  the  mummy-cloths  in  which  the  Jews 
had  fettered  it  for  a  thousand  years.  He  then  restored  its 
true  idea  as  being  hallowed  of  God.  Thus  the  day  allied 
the  child  to  its  Father  ;  the  work  of  the  day  put  him  in 
^sympathy  with  God's  spiritual  work,  and  the  work  of  the 
other  six  days  associated  him  with  his  Father  in  material 
work.  Oh,  happy  man  who  feels  that  his  six-days'  toil  is 
not  only  God's  appointment,  but  analogous  to  God's  brood- 
ing over  darkness  and  chaos,  to  call  out  order  and  light ! 
Then  the  creation  of  roses  from  soil,  houses  from  clay, 
and  temples  from  the  quarry,  is  really  Godlike.  Oh,  thrice 
happy  man  who  can  feel  that  his  seventh  day  keeps  pace 
with  God's  higher  work  for  spiritual  and  immortal  ends  ! 

We  shall  naturally  expect,  as  we  go  forward  from 
Jewish  to  Christian  dispensations,  that  there  will  be  a 
marked  advance ;  there  will  be  an  enlarged  liberty  of  man- 
hood to  those  whose  childhood  has  been  well  taught  by 
the  Mosaic  schoolmaster.  Those  who  learned  law  under 
Moses  will  find  more  amplitude  under  the  greater  grace 
and  truth  of  Christ.  As  the  passover  flowered  into  the 
Lord's  Supper,  so  will  the  significance  of  the  sabbath,  and 
its  mode  of  keeping,  bourgeon  into  greater  beauty  and 
worth. 

Christ  takes  some  of  the  commandments  of  the  older 
dispensation,  and  tells  their  wider  meaning  and  richer  spir- 
itual significance  in  the  new  kingdom.  "Ye  have  heard 
that  it  was  said  to  the  men  of  old.  Ye  shall  not  kill ;  but 
I  say  unto  you,  that  whosoever  is  angry  with  his  brother 
without  a  cause,  is  in  danger  of  the  judgment ;  and,  if  an- 
gry enough  to  say,  Thou  fool,  he  is  in  danger  of  hell-fire." 
So  he  takes  the  laws  against  adultery  and   perjury,  and 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        121 

makes  them  cover  the  thoughts  and  intents  of  the  heart; 
takes  the  law  of  loving  friends,  and  stretches  it  till  it 
covers  enemies  and  persecutors;  takes  the  universal  law 
of  human  nature  to  trust  in  gathered  treasure,  and  raises 
it  to  a  perfect  trust  for  food  and  raiment  in  the  source 
of  all  treasure,  even  God.  He  exalted  the  law  written  in 
stone,  transgressions  of  which  were  atoned  by  the  blood 
of  slain  victims,  till  now  no  man  feels  that  he  can  bring 
his  heart  clean  to  God  till  it  has  been  washed  in  the  aton- 
ing blood  of  Christ. 

Did  he  so  amazingly  exalt  the  sabbath  .'*  Yes,  indeed, 
he  did  it  by  his  whole  life  and  by  the  inspirations  of  his 
disciples.  What  sublime  sabbath-work  he  did  before  his 
death  !  Human  language  has  not  words  to  convey  the 
sweet  messages  of  rest  that  he  brought  to  toiling  men. 
The  weary  and  heavy-laden  have  ever  since  heard  him 
saying,  "Come  unto  me,  and  I  will  rest  you."  They  find 
indeed  that  it  means  more  than  our  version  says,  *'  give 
you  rest."  Christ  taught  that  in  him  should  men  find  a 
perpetual  sabbath  for  the  soul.  He  inspired  his  apostle  to 
declare  that  there  is  a  sabbath-keeping  for  the  people  of 
God ;  not  in  the  future  world,  but  in  the  present,  for  we 
who  have  believed  do  enter  into  rest.  And  Paul  in  writ- 
ing unto  the  Romans  ventures  to  commend  equally  him 
who  esteemeth  one  day  as  a  sabbath,  and  him  whose  sub- 
lime likeness  to  Christ  esteemeth  every  day  as  raised  to  a 
sabbatic  rank.  The  dim  hints  which  are  scattered  through 
the  whole  volume  of  sacred  writ,  of  a  coming  sabbatic 
condition  for  all  the  holy,  grow  so  clear  and  possibly  real 
in  Christ's  personal -teaching  and  that  of  his  disciples,  that 
some  think  it  mayl^e  realized  on  this  earth.  Some  believe 
in  a  long  sabbath  of  a  thousand  years,  when  swords  shall 
be  beat  into  ploughshares,  and  spears  into  pruning-hooks, 
and  nations  learn  war  no  more.  Whatever  may  be  true 
in  that  respect,  it  is  certain  that  all  that  is  essential  in  the 


122  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

figure  shall  be  realized  here  or  hereafter.  Already  Job's 
far-off,  uncertain  place  where  the  wicked  cease  from  trou- 
bling, and  the  weary  keep  a  sabbath,  grows  clearer  under 
Christ's  promise,  till  it  becomes  a  Father's  house  with  man- 
sions prepared  for  individual  men.  There  by  the  river  of 
life  shall  all  the  wounds  of  earth's  wars  and  labors  be 
healed,  and  one  blessed  sabbath,  such  as  God  enjoys,  be 
man's  forever. 

For  this  grand  consummation  the  earthly  sabbath  is  a 
preparation.  How  shall  man  use  it  so  that  it  shall  minis- 
ter to  the  designed  end  t  It  is  obvious  that  Christ  did  not 
commit  the  Pharisaic  error  of  specifying  a  mode  of  keep- 
ing the  day  holy.  He  left  it  as  a  divine  institution,  and 
permanent  in  human  history.  But  its  mode  of  observance 
may  be  varied  to  suit  man's  individual  development,  or  the 
form  of  civilization.  He  knew  that  any  true  keeping  of 
the  sabbath  must  come  from  the  state  of  one's  heart,  and 
not  the  condition  of  body.  Indeed,  no  one  can  truly  keep 
a  sabbath,  who  is  not,  like  John,  in  the  Spirit  on  the 
Lord's  Day.  Men  may  enact  laws  for  the  cessation  of 
labor,  for  the  stoppage  of  traffic  and  every  pursuit  of 
gain,  and  it  is  all  very  well.  But  how  far  short  of  God's 
idea  is  this !  Had  this  been  all,  Christ  might  have  said 
the  sabbath  was  made  for  bodies.  But,  in  saying  it  is  for 
man,  he  presented  an  ideal  as  much  above  this  as  souls 
are  above  bodies.  No  man  has  a  right  merely  to  rest  his 
body,  or  merely  to  refine  his  taste,  or  merely  to  enlarge 
his  intellect.  He  is  to  grow  in  the  whole  of  his  being, 
especially  in  the  highest  part  thereof.  How  is  the  soul 
to  grow } 

What  a  blessed  proof  of  our  tireless  immortality,  that 
the  rest  of  the  spirit  is  exercise  !  When  man's  body  no 
longer  aches  with  toil,  when  all  the  powers  of  the  mind 
are  sweetly  calmed  to  rest,  then  the  tireless  spirit  comes 
out   to   its   restful   activity.     Love   brings   no  weariness. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        1 23 

Sacred  awe  never  tires.  Blessed  adoration  knows  no 
fatigue.  Purified  spirits  above  contimLally  do  cry,  "  Holy, 
holy,  holy  !  "  They  cease  not  day  nor  night,  for  they  need 
no  rest  in  such  blissful  growth.  Here,  then,  is  the  sabbath 
of  the  Lord,  —  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  our  noblest 
faculties,  and  for  the  development  of  our  spiritual  being. 
Let,  then,  the  labor  for  gain  stop,  and  the  labor  for  God 
go  on  ;  and,  superinduced  upon  mere  quiet  for  refreshment, 
let  the  joy  of  the  Lord  be  your  strength.  Thus  shall  we 
share  the  invigoration  that  makes  the  ceaseless  praises  of 
heaven  possible,  the  tireless  rapture  and  growth  of  the 
immortal  spirit  a  realized  hope, 

Christ  would  say  to  his  followers  I  am  sure.  Rest  your 
body,  strengthen  it  with  the  rapture  of  the  joy  of  the 
Lord ;  labor  God's  sabbath  works,  that  is,  any  labor  that  is 
proper  on  other  days,  — with  this  difference  only,  that  they 
shall  be  a  direct  means  of  spiritual  growth  to  self,  or  work 
of  mercy  to  others.  "  Call  the  sabbath  a  delight,  the  holy 
of  the  Lord,  honorable,  not  doing  thine  own  ways,  nor  find- 
ing thine  own  pleasure  therein,  nor  speaking  thine  own 
words.  Then  thou  shalt  delight  thyself  in  the  Lord,  and 
I  will  cause  thee  to  ride  on  the  high  places  of  the  earth, 
and  feed  thee  with  the  heritage  of  Jacob  thy  father ;  for 
the  mouth  of  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it." 


124  SABBATH  ESSAYS, 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE   SABBATH. 

BY  REV.   WILLIAM   DE   LOSS  LOVE,   D.D.,   OF   SOUTH   HADLEY. 

Although  this  seems  to  be,  and  is,  a  large  subject, 
it  is  singular  that  we  have  only  three  scattered  verses 
of  Scripture  that  give  us  much  light  upon  it,  and  in  each  of 
those  three  there  is  only  an  incidental  allusion  to  it.  We 
have  to  work  our  way  out  to  large  conclusions  from 
small  premises  in  the  outset.  Many  statements  now 
to  be  made  must  be  a  mere  abstract.  Lack  of  time  com- 
pels the  omission  of  many  proofs ;  and  the  statements 
must  in  general  be  in  the  most  brief  and  positive  lan- 
guage. I  could  desire  more  time  for  the  circumlocutions 
of  modesty  and  rhetoric. 

The  Apostle  Paul,  after  his  embrace  of  Christianity, 
continued  regularly  to  attend  religious  services  with  the 
Jews  on  the  seventh-day  sabbath,  and  on  such  occasions 
to  preach  the  gospel  at  every  opportunity ;  but  in  no  in- 
stance do  we  find  him,  or  any  of  the  apostles,  holding  a 
meeting  with  the  disciples  by  themselves  on  that  day. 
There  is  no  evidence  that  the  seventh-day  sabbath  after 
Christ's  resurrection  was  ever  regarded  or  treated  as  a 
specifically  Christian  day,  although  it  was  some  time 
before  its  services  were  omitted  even  by  any  Christians. 
But  we  do  find  the  Apostle  Paul  holding  a  meeting  with 
Christians  on  the  first  day,  and  in  circumstances  indicat- 
ing that  they  customarily  held  meetings  each  week  on  its 
recurrence. 

The  first  record  we  have  of  Paul's  connection  with  the 
first  day  is  in  Acts  xx.  7 :  "And  upon  the  first  day  of  the 
week,  when  the  disciples  came  together  to  break  bread, 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        1 25 

Paul  preached  unto  them,  ready  to  depart  on  the  morrow ; 
and  continued  his  speech  until  midnight."  The  term  "first 
day  "  here  is  significant.  How  came  the  phrase  into  use  ? 
Christ  prophesied  that  he  would  rise  on  the  "third  day" 
(Matt.  XX.  19),  and  he  reminded  his  apostles  of  his  proph- 
ecy when  he  first  met  them  after  his  resurrection  (Luke 
xxiv.  46).  Angels  spoke  of  it  at  the  tomb  (Luke  xxiv. 
7) ;  the  two  disciples  going  to  Emmaus  told  the  Saviour 
of  it  (Luke  xxiv.  21);  Jews  heard  of  it,  and  observed  it 
in  setting  their  guard  at  the  sepulchre  (Matt,  xxvii.  63). 
The  Evangelists  make  record  of  that  "  third  day "  eight 
times.  It  was  the  common  expression  at  the  period  of 
the  resurrection,  and  nothing  is  heard  of  "  first  day " 
then.  The  Evangelists  wrote  their  Gospels  from  twenty 
to  forty  years  after ;  and  then  the  expression  everywhere 
is,  that  Christ  rose  on  the  "first  day  of  the  week."  Each 
of  the  Evangelists  thus  speaks  of  it,  and  Mark  twice. 
Luke  in  his  Gospel  four  times  speaks  of  the  prophecy  that 
Christ  would  rise  the  "third  day  :"  yet  some  thirty  years 
after  he  speaks  in  the  Acts  incidentally  of  the  "first  day" 
as  though  that  were  a  term  then  in  common  use  (Acts  xx. 
7).  And  about  that  same  time  Paul  in  First  Cormthians 
also  speaks  of  the  "first  day"  (xvi.  2).  This  marked 
change  from  "third"  to  "first"  day  suggests  a  contrast 
already  begun  between  the  seventh  and  the  first  day. 
That  contrast  suggests  the  early  Christian  keeping  of  the 
first  day,  and  the  religious  character  of  it,  as  somewhat 
like  that  of  the  seventh  day. 

Many  have  claimed  from  this  passage  in  Acts  xx.  7, 
that  Paul  and  his  companions  travelled  from  Troas  to 
Assos  on  Sunday,  thus  showing  they  did  not  regard  it  as 
sacred.  "Ready  to  depart  on  the  morrow."  Was  that 
morrow  Sunday,  or  Monday  1  The  answer  depends  upon 
whether  Luke  reckoned  by  Jewish  or  Roman  time.  The 
claim  that  it  was  of  course  Jewish  is  mere  assumption. 


1 26  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  VS. 

The  best  of  authorities,  as  Home  some  time  ago,  and 
Smith's  dictionary  now,  say  that  the  Jewish  chronology 
at  this  period  was  modified  by  the  Roman,  which  dated 
the  day  at  midnight  as  we  do,  and  not  at  sunset  as  the 
Jews  did.  An  example  of  change  is  this  :  Old  Testament 
passages  show  that  by  the  Jewish  reckoning  there  were 
only  three  watches  in  the  night  (Lam.  ii.  19;  Judg.  vii. 
19;  Exod.  xiv.  24;  I  Sam.  xi.  11).  In  Christ's  time,  by 
his  language  in  one  case  (Mark  xiii.  35),  and  Matthew's 
in  another  (Matt.  xiv.  25),  there  were  four  night  watches. 
Hegewisch  ^  and  others  say  that  Jewish  chronology  was 
also  modified  by  the  Babylonian,  and  the  Babylonians 
and  Persians  commenced  the  day  with  sunrise  instead  of 
sunset.  Reasons  for  believing  that  Luke  in  this  passage 
used  Roman  or  Babylonian,  and  not  Jewish  computation, 
are :  — 

1.  He  wrote  the  book  of  Acts  chiefly  of  Gentile 
churches,  and  mainly  for  them,  and  was  likely  to  use  the 
same  chronology  that  they  did,  which  was  Roman. 

2.  The  morning  of  the  day  was  made  conspicuous  by 
Christ's  resurrection,  and  his  disciples  would  not  be  likely 
to  begin  the  celebration  of  it  the  night  previous  ;  certainly 
not  out  of  special  regard  to  Judaism  just  then.  If  there 
were  any  choice  in  chronologies,  as  there  was,  Luke  would 
be  likely  to  employ  that  which  was  not  Jewish. 

3.  The  EvangeHsts  did  in  a  similar  instance  use  Roman 
or  Babylonian  chronology,  and  not  Jewish ;  and  therefore 
Luke  probably  did  in  this.  The  instance  is  as  follows  : 
The  Apostle  John,  having  recorded  Christ's  resurrection, 
says  that  he  suddenly  appeared  in  the  company  of  the  dis- 
ciples, "  the  same  day  at  evening,  being  the  first  day  of 
the  week"  (John  xx.  19).  Was  this  the  evening  of  the 
first  day  by  Jewish  reckoning,  or  Roman  ">  It  was  proba- 
bly after  sunset;  for  the  doors  were  shut  ''for  fear  of  the 

1  Introduction  to  Chronology,  pp.  17,  71. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        \2J 

Jews,"  and  they  probably  had  sought  cover  of  the  shades 
of  evening.  The  two  disciples  who  went  to  Emmaus 
that  day  had  there  **  sat  at  meat  "  with  Jesus  "  towards 
evening  "  (Luke  xxiv.  29,  30)  ;  then  had  gone  to  Jerusa- 
lem several  miles  distant,  and  there  had  found  the  dis- 
ciples before  Jesus  appeared  among  them.  It  cannot 
reasonably  be  supposed  that  all  this  was  done  previous 
to  sunset.  Further,  the  Jews  did  not  usually  take  their 
evening  meal  until  their  day's  work  was  done,  which  was 
at  sunset ;  and  when  Jesus  appeared  in  the  midst  of  his 
disciples  they  were  sitting  at  meat,  and  on  such  a  day, 
full  of  strange  events,  they  would  be  likely  to  eat  after, 
rather  than  before,  their  usual  time.  Therefore,  again,  it 
was  doubtless  after  sunset.  Yet  more,  John  expressly 
says  it  was  oypiaq  (xx.  19),  late,  the  later  evening,  when 
Christ  appeared  among  his  disciples.  The  Jews  had  two 
evenings, — one  between  three  p.m.  and  sunset,  and  one 
after  sunset,  immediately  following  the  former.  Christ's 
appearance  being  in  the  later  evening,  it  is  certain  that 
it  was  after  sunset.  I  have  named  four  reasons  for  believ- 
ing it  was  after  sunset,  and  they  culminate  in  certainty. 
But  John  says,  it  was  ''  the  same  day  at  evening,  being 
the  first  day  of  the  week."  He  reckons  the  later  evening, 
the  one  after  sunset,  as  part  of  the  day  preceding  it,  and 
not  as  the  beginning  of  another  day.  A  fifth  reason  set- 
tles the  question  absolutely.  Christ  rose  the  first  day. 
The  evening  of  the  "same  day"  on  which  he  rose  would 
have  been,  by  Jewish  reckoning,  the  night  before  he  rose  ; 
since  with  the  Jews  the  evening  was  the  first  part  of  the 
day.  Therefore  the  Apostle  John  in  this  instance  wrote 
by  Roman  or  Babylonian  chronology,  and  not  the  Jewish. 
But  Luke,  in  the  Acts,  would  be  mo7'e  likely  than  John 
to  use  Roman  reckonins:,  because  he  wrote  more  of  and 
for  Gentile  or  Roman  churches.  Paul  held  the  meeting, 
now  in  question,  at  Troas  on   an  evening,  and  certainly 


128  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

? • 

continued  it  after  sunset ;  for  he  did  not  close  it  till  after 
midnight.  They  celebrated  the  Lord's  Supper  on  that 
occasion,  and  seem  to  have  waited  "  seven  days  "  for  the 
usual  time.  It  was  an  occasion  very  similar  to  that  when 
Jesus  met  his  disciples  on  the  first  evening  after  his  resur- 
rection. In  the  latter  instance  the  apostle  John  puts  the 
evening  with  the  day  preceding ;  and,  in  the  case  of  Paul 
at  Troas,  Luke  would  be  still  more  likely  to  reckon  the 
evening  with  the  day  preceding.  If  he' did  so  reckon, 
then  Paul  and  his  companions  did  not  travel  to  Assos 
on  Sunday,  but  on  Monday.  This  passage  rightly  inter- 
preted, then,  brings  weighty  evidence  against  both  the 
seventh-day  Sabbatarians,  and  those  who  have  used  it  to 
show  that  the  early  Christians  did  not  keep  the  first  day 
sacred. 

In  I  Cor.  xvi.  2,  we  read  :  "  Upon  the  first  day  of  the 
week  let  every  one  of  you  lay  by  him  in  store,  as  God 
hath  prospered  him,  that  there  be  no  gatherings  when  I 
come."  Though  each  one  was  to  decide  upon  the  amount 
of  his  gift  at  home  on  the  ''first  day,"  there  were  to  be 
"  gatherings  "  of  the  contributions,  and  these  were  most 
naturally  on  the  first  day  also.  This  is  made  nearly  or 
quite  certain  by  the  fact,  that  about  three-fourths  of  a 
century  after,  according  to  the  definite  testimony  of  Justin 
Martyr,  one  part  of  the  regular  services  of  Christians  on 
each  first  day,  in  connection  with  the  Lord's  Supper,  was 
this :  '*  They  who  are  well  to  do,  and  willing,  give  what 
each  thinks  fit ;  and  what  is  collected  is  deposited  with  the 
president,  who  succors  the  orphans  and  widows,  and  those 
who  through  sickness  or  any  other  cause  are  in  want,  and 
those  who  are  in  bonds,  and  the  strangers  sojourning 
among  us,  and,  in  a  word,  takes  care  of  all  who  are  in 
want."  ^  This  custom  no  doubt  originated  with  the  apos- 
tles, and  perhaps  at  Pentecost.     In  Justin  Martyr's  time 

1  Ant.-Nic.  Lib.,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  65,  66. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        12g 

the  collection  was  made  on  the  Jirst  day  of  the  week. 
The  entire  probability  is,  that  it  was  made  by  the  Corin- 
thians through  Paul's  direction  on  the  first  day.  The 
passage  at  least  shows  a  marked  distinction  given  to  the 
first  day  in  the  apostle  Paul's  time.  The  collection,  being 
taken  in  connection  with  lengthy  religious  services  in  Jus- 
tin Martyr's  day,  was  probably  similarly  taken  in  Paul's 
day.  But  the  apostle  gave  the  same  *'  order  to  the  churches 
of  Galatia  "  (i  Cor.  xvi.  i),  —  to  more  than  one  church, — 
and  no  doubt  the  ''first  day"  part  of  it  was  included. 
And  he  commended  the  example  of  the  Corinthians  in 
their  contributions,  to  the  believers  of  Macedonia  (2  Cor. 
ix.  2) ;  and  probably  the  "  first  day  "  was  not  there  omit- 
ted. And  the  Macedonians  seem  to  have  followed  the 
example  of  the  Corinthians  ;  for  Paul  commended  the  ex- 
ample of  both  Corinthians  and  Macedonians  to  the  dis- 
ciples at  Rome  (Rom.  xv.  26).  Paul  commenced  his 
original  direction  thus  :  "  Upon  the  first  day  of  the 
week."  The  daj^  comes  first  and  foremost.  Was  he  likely 
to  omit  that  part  in  his  directions  and  commendation  to 
the  churches  of  Galatia,  and  the  believers  in  Macedonia 
and  at  Rome  ?  Not  at  all.  Then  the  first  day  of  the 
week  was  a  very  noted  time  in  all  those  Gentile  churches, 
and  doubtless  among  all  Christians.  The  Gentile  Chris- 
tians in  all  these  churches,  previous  to  conversion,  had 
been  unaccustomed  to  any  marked  septenary  division  of 
time.  The  meeting  at  Troas,  and  the  laying  by  in  store 
at  home,  and  the  collections  of  contributions  in  so  many 
churches  on  the  first  day  of  the  week,  render  it  certain 
that  that  day  was  in  some  sense  sacred  and  religious 
among  the  early  Christians.  If,  now,  it  were  germane  to 
add  concerning  the  apostle  John's  utterance  respecting 
the  "Lord's  Day,."  we  should  much  increase  the  accumu- 
lating evidence.  But,  keeping  to  the  Pauline  limitations, 
we  find  much   proof   of   distinctively  Christian   meetings 


I30  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

very  frequently  held.  Glancing  at  a  few  chapters  in  First 
Corinthians  alone,  we  can  easily  number  a  dozen  instances 
where  religious  assemblies  are  spoken  of.  They  were 
meetings  of  Christians,  and  not  ordinarily,  if  at  all,  held  on 
the  Jewish  sabbath ;  for  Christians  continued  more  or  less 
to  attend  Jewish  services.  When  were  these  many  Chris- 
tian meetings  held,  except  on  the  Lord's  Day  ?  And,  if 
thus  held,  that  day  of  necessity  became  religious  to  the 
believers.  This  Pauline  example  of  holding  services  on 
the  first  day,  and  treating  it  as  a  noted  and  a  sacred  day, 
was  by  inspiration,  and  is  precept  for  us,  binding  where- 
ever  tJie  gospel  goes. 

Turn  to  the  third  and  last  passage  from  Paul,  concern- 
ing this  subject,  found  in  Col.  ii.  i6 :  ''Let  no  man 
therefore  judge  you  in  meat,  or  in  drink,  or  in  respect  of 
a  holy  day,  or  of  the  new  moon,  or  of  the  sabbath  days." 
All  agree  that  the  phrase,  "Let  no  man  therefore  judge 
you,"  makes  it  optioiial  for  Christians  to  observe,  or  not, 
those  several  customs  and  feasts  and  days ;  optional  to 
observe  the  "■  sabbath  days,"  or  not,  whatever  they  were. 

Two  classes  say  that  "sabbath  days"  mean  Jewish 
feast-days,  not  seventh-day  sabbaths.  They  are  seventh- 
day  Sabbatarians,  and  first-day  Sabbatarians  who  fear  the 
first  day  will  suffer  if  the  sabbath  in  any  respect  is  meant 
in  this  passage. 

That  the  word  "  sabbath  days  "  does  not  refer  to  Jewish 
festivals,  appears  from  the  following:  i.  The  word  ''holy 
day "  refers  to  such  festivals,  and  another  word  for  the 
same  is  not  probable  in  the  same  phrase.  2.  The  word 
"  sabbath  days,"  in  English  or  Greek,  does  not  elsewhere 
mean  such  festivals  in  the  whole  New  Testament.  This 
all  must  admit.  3.  It  elsewhere,  in  the  nearly  fifty  in- 
stances, means  seventh-day  sabbaths.  4.  Jewish  feasts 
are  often  spoken  of  in  the  New  Testament,  but  not  one  of 
them  anywhere  is  called  a  sabbath,  or  credited  with  the 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        131 

nature  of  the  sabbath.  5.  In  the  Old-Testament  Hebrew 
none  of  those  feast-days  are  ever  termed  a  sabbath,  save 
the  day  of  atonement  twice.  That  was  indeed  a  full  sab- 
bath in  its  manner  of  being  kept.  6.  There  is  a  mistrans- 
lation in  the  English  in  the  case  of  the  feasts  of  trum- 
pets and  tabernacles,  where  they  are  called  sabbaths 
(Lev.  xxiii.  24,  39).  The  Hebrew  for  sabbath  is  sJiabbathy 
or,  shabbath  shabbatJwn.  The  feasts  of  trumpets  and 
tabernacles  are  termed  merely  shabbatJwn,  —  a  sabbatism, 
or  partial  sabbath,  or  rest  only.  7.  The  Septuagint  notes 
this  distinction,  not  translating  these  feasts  by  the  Greek 
aappdrcdv,  but  by  dvanavGi^,  rest.  8.  A  member  of  the  Old- 
Testament  Bible-revision  committee  has  recently  said, 
"The  distinction  between  r\3'^  and  p'r^^t?^,  in  Lev.  xxiii., 
will  be  marked  in  the  new  revision  by  a  difference  of 
expression.  What  it  will  be,  I  am  not  at  liberty  to  say." 
9.  The  Targums  on  the  Pentateuch,  that  is,  the  transla- 
tions of  it  by  ancient  Jews  into  the  Chaldee  language, 
make  like  distinctions  with  the  Septuagint.  10.  The 
phraseology  in  Col.  ii.  16,  "Of  a  holy  day,  or  of  the  new 
moon,  or  of  the  sabbath  days,"  is  in  substance  a  copy  of 
language  in  Ezekiel  (xlv.  17),  and  there  the  word  for  "sab- 
baths "  in  the  Hebrew  is  not  for  feast-days,  but  for  full 
sabbaths  ;  and  a  rational  inference  is,  that  real  seventh- 
day  sabbaths  are  meant  in  Colossians.  "  Holy  day  "  in 
Colossians  should  be  "feast-day,"  as,  in  the  other  twenty- 
six  instances  in  the  New  Testament,  the  original  is  ren- 
dered "feast."  In  six  other  places  in  the  Old  Testament 
the  word  for  sabbaths  is  joined  to  those  for  "feast"  and 
"  new  moon,"  and  in  each  case  the  original  means  "  sab- 
baths," and  not  "  sabbatisms."  11.  In  the  nearly  one 
hundred  and  fifty  texts  in  the  Bible  where  the  word  "  sab- 
bath "  or  "  sabbath  day,"  singular  or  plural,  is  used,  there 
are  only  two  where  it  is  properly  applied  to  any  day  except 
the  sabbath,  and,  in  those,  to  the  day  of  atonement,  and 


132  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

in  the  single  book  of  Leviticus.  One  hundred  and  fifty 
against  two !  The  day  of  atonement  occurred  once,  while 
the  sabbath  occurred  fifty-two  times.  Was  it  that  isolated 
day  of  atonement  that  the  apostle  meant }  What  violent 
hands  they  are,  though  not  so  designed,  that  take  that 
one  text,  and  affirm  it  means  Jewish  feast-days,  and  then 
build  a  doctrine  on  it,  and  a  new  observance  on  it !  Some 
seventh-day  Sabbatarians  admit  that  if  this  word  in  Colos- 
sians  does  not  mean  feast-days,  their  theory  cannot  stand. 
It  is  the  one  brick  in  the  row,  that,  tipped  over  against 
them,  knocks  down  all  their  other  proofs. 

But  the  non-sabbath  Lord's-Day  men  here  meet  us. 
They  say  the  word  does  mean  seventh-day  sabbaths,  and 
that  Paul  set  them  aside ;  and  from  that  they  take  the 
tremendously  illogical  leap  to  the  conclusion  that  he  set 
aside  the  Fourth  Commandment.  What !  was  that  sab- 
bath, kept  by  the  Jews  after  Christians  were  keeping  the 
first  day ;  that  sabbath  which  the  Talmudist  doctors  of 
the  law  buried  with  excrescences  and  perversions  ;  that 
sabbath  which  Christ  disowned  as  Pharisaism  held  it,  — 
was  that  sabbath  the  one  given  by  the  Lord  on  Sinai  ? 
Much  depends  on  the  meaning  of  this  word  ''sabbath 
days."  We  may  well  call  this  passage  the  Rosetta  stone 
of  interpretation  on  this  subject. 

We  need  to  get  into  the  very  notion  of  the  sabbath  as 
:it  was  in  Christ's  and  the  apostles'  time.  The  Lord  of 
heaven  might  not  heal  the  sick,  nor  loose  a  poor  crippled 
woman  from  her  bonds,  upon  that  day,  without  suffering 
the  charge  of  sabbath-breaking.  A  healed  man,  when 
mercy  came  to  him  away  from  home,  might  not  carry 
his  bundle  of  a  bed  with  him  as  he  went  to  tell  the  news 
to  his  family.  Hungry  men  might  not  pick  and  shell  in 
their  hands  a  few  heads  of  grain,  and  eat  the  kernels,  as 
they  passed  by  the  field  in  going  from  one  meeting  to 
another.     One  might  not  wear  sandals  on  the  sabbath  over 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        1 33 

those  flinty  Palestine  paths  if  they  had  nails  in  the  sole, 
for  that  would  be  breaking  the  law  by  bearing  a  burden. 
One  might  not  carry  a  pail  of  water  to  his  thirsty  animal, 
for  that  would  be  bearing  a  burden  ;  but  he  might  lead 
the  animal  to  the  water,  for  then  it  would  bear  the  burden, 
and  there  was  no  law  against  horses  or  camels  carrying 
water  after  they  drank  it.  One  might  not  walk  on  the 
grass,  for  the  bruising  of  it  would  be  a  kind  of  threshing, 
as  was  the  shelling  of  wheat  in  the  apostles'  hands.  The 
Essenes  would  not  remove  a  dish  or  vessel  on  the  sab- 
bath, for  that  would  be  bearing  a  burden  ;  and  some  of 
them  would  not  move  themselves  if  caught  away  from 
home  Saturday  night,  but  stay  there  in  the  street  or  any- 
where else  the  full  twenty-four  hours.  Oil  might  not  be 
taken  internally  as  a  medicine  on  the  sabbath,  though  it 
might  be  used  externally  for  perfuming  the  person.  One 
might  not  catch  a  biting  flea,  for  that  would  be  hunting. 
Thirty-nine  rules  —  and  these  are  some  of  the  minutiae 
under  them  —  those  doctors  of  the  law  had  against  labor 
on  the  sabbath. 

Now,  when  the  apostle  said,  "Judge  for  yourselves 
about  keeping  the  sabbath,"  it  was  such  a  sabbath,  the 
one  right  there,  known  to  him  and  the  people.  And  is 
it  right  to  say,  that,  when  he  made  that  sabbath  optional, 
he  swept  away  the  whole  Fourth  Commandment }  Nay  } 
When  God  said  to  the  apostate  Jews,  "The  new  moons 
and  sabbaths,  the  calling  of  assemblies,  I  cannot  away 
with,"  did  he  mean  the  sabbath  of  the  Fourth  Command- 
ment, and  did  he  revoke  it  .-* 

Again,  at  the  time  Paul  wrote,  the  new  dispensation  had 
come  in ;  a  new  day  had  appeared,  better,  dearer  by  far 
than  the  old.  It  told  of  the  glorious  resurrection  of  the 
Son  of  God  ;  it  assured  of  like  resurrection  of  his  saints, 
or  of  their  quick  change  and  transition  to  glory.  That 
noted  day,  full  of  the  memory  of  wonders,  the  Christians 


134  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

deemed  the  light  of  heaven,  and  in  some  sense  were 
keeping  it  sacred,  as  by  divine  authority.  Was  omitting 
the  seventh-day  observance  theit  all  the  same  as  omitting 
it  before  Christ  came  ?  Was  making  the  mere  seventh  day 
optional  then  all  the  same  as  pronouncing  the  Fourth  Com- 
mandment abolished  ?  Was  it  the  same  that  it  would 
have  been  under  the  old  dispensation  ?  No  !  Circum- 
stances alter  cases.  Observe  that  neither  Paul  nor  any  of 
the  apostles  say  that  the  Fourth  Commandment  is  abol- 
ished; and  the  question  is,  whether  men  now  can  be  justi- 
fied in  saying  so,  on  the  ground  that  Paul  releases  from 
obligation  to  keep  the  seventh  when  the  new  and  clean 
first  day  is  given. 

But  some  go  further,  and  tell  us  the  whole  Decalogue  is 
abolished.  They  prove  it,  they  say,  from  Paul,  where  he 
says,  ''  Ye  are  not  under  the  law,  but  under  grace  ;  "  "  We 
are  delivered  from  the  law  ; "  ''  If  ye  be  led  of  the  Spirit, 
ye  are  not  under  the  law."  On  the  basis  of  such  texts 
they  say  the  law  is  abrogated.  Does  a  comprehensive 
view  of  the  Scriptures  justify  their  conclusion  t  Is  not 
rather  this  the  meaning.?  "We  are  not  under  the  cere- 
monial law,  to  obtain  salvation  through  its  ceremonies  and 
sacrifices  ;  nor  under  the  moral  law,  to  be  justified  and 
saved  by  our  good  deeds,  or  be  lost ;  nor  under  it  as  un- 
willing subjects  to  be  driven  by  its  penalties,  —  because 
love  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  law,  and  the  love  of  Christ 
constraineth  us."  To  say  we  are  not  under  the  law,  in 
being  obligated  by  its  principles  of  right  and  righteous- 
ness, that  it  is  abolished  so  as  not  to  be  to  us  an  ever- 
living  testimony  of  God's  will,  that  the  Ten  Command- 
ments are  no  more  to  us  a  guidance  to  the  divine  pleasure, 
—  is  it  not  theoretical  antinomianism .?  But  Archbishop 
Whately  says  the  law  of  the  Decalogue  was  intended  for 
the  Israelites  exclusively ;  ^  and  Dr.  R.  W.  Dale  says  the 

1  Difficulties,  St.  Paul,  p.  147. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE   WORD   OF  GOD.        1 35 

Fourth  Commandment  was  given  to  the  Jews  only.^  The 
inference  is  made,  that,  the  Jewish  economy  having  passed 
away,  the  Decalogue  is  abrogated.  The  Jewish  ceremonial 
and  civil  laws  have  passed  away ;  but  moral  laws  stand  on 
a  different  basis.  "  Moral  duties,''  says  Bishop  Butler, 
**  arise  out  of  the  nature  of  the  case  itself,  prior  to 
external  command."  Then,  moral  duties  engrossed  in  the 
Decalogue  existed  before  their  engrossment,  and  exist  after 
it  forever,  because  the  case  of  man's  moral  obligations  is 
not  changed.  Whately  says  the  moral  law  written  in  our 
hearts  is  unabolished,  and  that  moral  precepts  are  binding 
on  all  in  all  ages.^  Dr.  Bushnell  says,  "  Plainly  enough 
the  law  of  God  never  can  be  taken  away  from  any  world 
or  creature ;  for  with  it,  in  close  company,  goes  abroad  all 
the  conserving  principle,  moral  and  physical,  in  which 
God's  kingdom  stands."^  Then  God's  moral  law  in  the 
Decalogue  cannot  be  taken  away.  No  matter  though 
engrossed  specially  for  the  Israelites,  as  it  was,  it  was 
engrossed  for  man.  No  matter  when  or  where  God's 
moral  law  breaks  forth :  it  is  for  mankind.  Tertullian 
well  exclaims,  "Why  should  God  ...  be  believed  to  have 
given  a  law  through  Moses  to  one  people,  and  not  be  said 
to  have  assigned  it  to  all  nations  '^.  "  He  speaks  of  the 
moral  law,  and  declares,  "  He  gave  to  all  nations  the  self- 
same law."  *  But  is  the  Fourth  Commandment  a  moral 
law }  Two  classes  of  errorists  are  here  :  one  class  call  it 
wholly  moral ;  the  other,  wholly  positive.  It  is  in  part 
both.  But  can  both  kinds  of  elements  be  united  in  the 
same  law .''  Yes.  See  an  example  in  the  next  neighbor 
to  the  Fourth :  ''  Honor  thy  father  and  thy  mother " 
(moral  and  perpetual),  "  that  thy  days  may  be  long  upon 
the  land  which  the  Lord  thy  God  giveth  thee  "  (positive 
and  temporary).     Paul  changed  it  from  Canaan  to  "earth." 

1  Ten  Commandments,  p.  93.  2  Difficulties,  St.  Paul,  pp.  150,  159. 

8  Forgiveness  and  Law,  p.  119.  ■*  Ant.-Nic.  Lib.,  vol.  xviii.,  p.  200. 


1 36  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

In  the  Fourth  are  rest,  physical  and  spiritual,  worship,  holi- 
ness. But  the  septe?iary  element  is  not  moral,  it  is  posi- 
tive. God  can  take  it,  and  put  the  first  day  in  place  of 
the  seventh,  and  still  be  immutable.  Yet  those  moral 
elements  that  live  in  all  ages,  that  cannot  be  taken  away, 
where  are  they  now.?  Not  in  the  seventh  day,  for  inspired 
Paul  tells  us  the  seventh-day  sabbath  is  now  only  optional. 
I  Paul  makes  sacred  the  first  day,  John  calls  it  the  *'  Lord's 
Day,"  primitive  saints  observed  it :  are  not  the  sabbatical 

/     elements    in    it .?      Those    moral    elements    exist   without 

/    being  re-appointed.     The  apostles  never  did  so  foolish  a 

'     thing  as  to  re-enact  them. 

But  admit  for  a  little  that  the  Fourth  and  all  the  Com- 
mandments are  abrogated,  as  some  assure  us.     When  cir- 
cumcision passed  away,  Paul  did   not  appeal  to  it  as  in 
force  any  more.     When  laws  become  dead  on  our  statute- 
books,  abrogated  by  our  law-makers,  our  magistrates  do 
not  undertake  to  enforce  them,  do  not  appeal  to  them  as 
authority.     Surely  the  apostle  will  not  appeal  to  the  ab- 
rogated Decalogue  !     He  will  let  it  slumber  with  the  dead 
past.     Look,  now,  over  the  pages  of  his  Epistles  to  the 
churches.     See  them    swept    clean  of   all  the  Command- 
ments !    But  what !  has  Paul  gone  back  to  legalism  }    Has 
his  inspiration  failed  him .?     Fallen  from  grace  is  he,  or 
fallen  from  doctrine .''     Some  years  after  telling  us  that  we 
i  are  not  under  the  law,  he  actually  appeals  to  the  law  for 
I  authority  and  for  the  rule  of  righteousness:  ''Honor  thy 
^  father  and  thy  mother ;  which  is  the  first  conimandment 
.   with  promised     And  in  the  same  book  where  he  tells  us, 
"  We  are  delivered  from  the  law,"  he  afterwards  appeals 
to  that  law  again  :  "■  Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery,  thou 

.    shalt  not  kill,  thou   shalt   not  steal,"  and  on  to  the  end. 
And  this  Pauline   summons  of    Sinai  is  equalled  by  the 

'.    Apostle  James's  like  appeal  (ii.  8-1 1).     And,  in  the  very 
Epistle  where  some  claim  that  the  law  is  abolished,  Paul 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD    OF  GOD.        1 3/ 

himself  refutes  them  by  affirming,  ''The  law  is  holy,  just, 
and  good."  "Do  we,  then,  make  void  the  law  through 
faith  ?  God  forbid ;  yea,  we  establish  the  law."  Profess- 
or G.  P.  Fisher  says,  and  others  say,  the  change  from 
seventh  to  first  day  was  by  no  explicit  ordinance.^  Truth  ; 
but  it  requires  more  truth.  The  change  from  passover 
to  supper,  from  animal  sacrifice  to  the  one  sacrifice  of 
Christ,  was  by  no  explicit  ordinance.  The  new  was  com- 
menced, the  old  gradually  passed  away.  But  there  were 
certain  moral  truths  underlying  the  old  in  each  case,  which 
are  embraced  in  the  new.  So  the  moral  elements  in  the 
seventh-day  sabbath  are  contained  in  the  Lord's  Day. 
Some  positive  elements  in  all  the  old  are  changed  to  other 
positive  in  the  new. 

Is  the  interpretation  of  the  Pauline  Scriptures  now 
given,  consonant  with  the  testimony  of  the  early  Chris- 
tian fathers,  and  is  it  the  only  interpretation  that  is  agree- 
able thereto  .-*  Beginning  with  the  death  of  the  apostle 
John,  within  one  century  eleven  of  the  fathers  testify  to 
the  keeping  of  the  Lord's  Day  by  the  Christians  ;  and 
within  about  three  and  a  half  centuries  nearly  fifty  tes- 
tify to  it.  The  first  of  them  was  contemporary  with  the 
apostle  John.  Some  of  them  testify  that  Sunday  observ- 
ance began  with  the  apostles.  Within  about  three  centu- 
ries after  the  apostolic  age,  some  twenty  of  the  fathers 
testify  that  the  Christians  generally  did  not  consider  the 
observance  of  the  seventh  day  obligatory.  These  facts 
are  utterly  inconsistent  with  seventh-day  Sabbatarianism. 
A  portion  of  them  overthrow  the  modern  theory  of  some, 
that  the  early  Christians  did  not  specifically  keep  a7iy 
day  sacred.  They  also  condemn  the  view  that  the  early 
Christians  were  at  variance  among  themselves,  whether 
to  keep  the  first  day  or  not.  The  testimony  of  the  early 
fathers  is   absolutely  inconsistent   with   modern  declara- 

1  Beginnings  of  Christianity,  p.  562. 


138  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

tions  that  the  early  Christians  prosecuted  their  secular 
business  on  Sunday.  They  spoke  of  the  first  day  as 
holy,  and  sacred,  and  chief.  It  was  their  great  delight. 
Tertullian  specifically  says  in  substance  that  secularities 
should  be  refrained  from  on  the  first  day.  On  this  point 
the  statement  of  Theodore  Parker  should  have  weight. 
Treating  of  the  keeping  of  Sunday  by  the  early  Chris- 
tians, he  said,  what  can  be  corroborated,  "The  Romans, 
like  all  other  nations,  had  certain  festal  days  in  which  it 
was  not  thought  proper  to  labor  unless  work  was  press- 
ing. It  was  disreputable  to  continue  common  labor  on 
such  days  without  an  urgent  reason."^  Did  the  primitive 
Christians  care  less  about  their  chief  of  days  than  idol- 
atrous worshippers  did  about  theirs } 

But  did  the  fathers  teach  that  the  Fourth  Commandment 
was  abolished }  Some  say  they  did.  I  do  not  believe  one 
sentence  can  be  produced  sustaining  that  position.  Their 
writings  are  misinterpreted.  They  argue  that  the  Fourth 
Commandment  in  respect  to  keeping  the  seventh  day  is 
no  longer  binding.  And  that  is  just  what  we  now  hold, 
whether  or  not  maintaining  that  that  command  is  still 
obligatory  in  other  respects.  The  point  of  their  argument 
has  by  many  been  missed.  They  were  in  controversy 
with  those  who  said,  "  You  must  keep  the  seventh  day, 
generally  then  called  sabbath."  Yet  Tertullian,  on  this 
very  question,  after  naming  "sabbath"  explains  himself 
by  saying  "seventh  day."^  It  shows  what  he  was  about, 
trying  to  refute  those  who  troubled  many  Christians  by 
saying  they  ought  still  to  keep  the  seventh  day.  He  and 
other  fathers  labor  to  show  in  substance  that  there  was 
nothing  sinful  per  se  in  not  keeping  the  seventh  day,  and 
that  they  were  now  released  from  it.  He  cites  the  case 
of   the  Israelitish  army  marching   around  Jericho   seven 

1  Sermon  on  Christian  Use  of  the  Sunday,  p.  22. 

2  Ant.-Nic.  Lib.,  vol.  xviii.,  p.  211. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE   WORD   OF  GOD.       1 39 

days  in  succession,  of  course  one  day  being  the  sabbath  ; 
and  thence  infers  that  it  does  not  break  up  the  founda- 
tions of  all  things  not  to  keep  the  seventh  day.  But  he 
does  not  say  that  the  Fourth  Commandment  is  gone. 

The  question  is  not  whether  the  sacred  day  of  the 
new  dispensation  is  the  Jewish  sabbath  of  the  old,  nor 
whether  apostles  gave  the  Judaistic  day  to  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  No  one  claims  that  they  did.  To  debate 
it  were  missing  the  point.  But  it  is,  whether  certain 
moral  sabbatic  elements  of  the  Decalogue  —  which  is  7iot 
the  whole  of  the  Jewish  sabbath  —  are  not  divinely  given 
in  the  Lord's  Day.  The  Fathers  plainly  indicate  that 
sacred  time,  rest,  spirituality,  holy  convocations,  religious 
services,  and  the  Lord's  Supper,  especially  belonged  to 
the  Lord's  Day,  which  makes  that  day,  in  their  concep- 
tion, at  least  akin  to  the  Decalogue  sabbath.  The  dis- 
cussions of  their  time  necessarily  put  the  seventh  and  the 
Lord's  Day  in  some  contrast  with  each  other  ;  and  in  that 
connection  the  Fathers  indicate  that  the  Lord's  Day  was 
religious,  as  much  or  more  so  than  the  seventh  day.  For 
example,  Ignatius  speaks  of  the  Christian  '*  observance 
of  the  Lord's  Day  ;"i  and  Tertullian,  of  the  sacred  rites  of 
the  Lord's  Day.^  The  Fathers  also  compared  the  two 
days,  giving  the  religious,  superiority  to  the  Lord's  Day. 
(See  Irenaeus,^  Clement,*  Origen.^)  The  Fathers,  in  de- 
scribing the  Lord's  Day,  used  ideas  and  phraseology  for- 
merly employed  to  describe  the  sabbath  of  the  Decalogue. 
Dionysius  speaks  of  the  "Lord's  Jioly  day."^  His  word 
for  "holy"  has  the  same  root  that  the  Septuagint  —  both 
being  Greek  —  employs  for  "holy"  in  the  Fourth  Com- 
mandment. Athanasius  speaks  of  the  command  to  keep 
the  sabbath,   and   then   says,    "  So  we  hoiwr  the  Lord's 

1  Ant.-Nic.  Lib.,  vol.  i.,  p.  i8o.         *  ibid.,  vol.  xii.,  p.  284. 

2  Ibid.,  vol.  XV.,  p.  428.  5  Comm.  Ex.  Patrologiae,  torn,  xii.,  p.  3S5. 

8  Ibid  ,  vol.  ix.,  pp.  162,  163.  6  Patrologiae,  Euseb.  Eccl.  Hist.,  b.  iv.,  c.  23. 


140  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

Day."^  The  council  of  Laodicea,  deprecating  Judaizing 
on  the  then  Jews'  sabbath,  says  Christians  ought  to  give 
the  ''chief  honor  to  the  Lord's  Day."^  But  carefully 
observe,  that,  in  all  cases,  the  Fathers  speak  of  the  Jewish 
seventh  day  in  their  time,  and  do  not  affirm  or  assume 
that  their  view  annuls  the  totality  of  the  Fourth  Command- 
ment. They  may  not  have  had  full  conceptions  of  the 
true  philosophy  of  the  case  ;  but  they  seem  to  have  been 
kept  by  a  gracious  divine  Providence  from  affirming  false- 
hood on  this  subject.  Scrutinize  the  matter,  and  you  will 
see  that  the  Fathers  in  fact  retained  in  the  Lord's  Day 
all  the  moral  elements  of  the  sabbath  of  the  Decalogue, 
though  not  retaining  the  seventh-day  7iumbcr.  The  Fa- 
thers recognized  the  distinction  between  the  moral  and 
ceremonial  law.  The  evidence  is  too  much  for  present 
space.  But  Irenaeus  says,  ''The  Lord  did  not  abrogate 
the  natural  precepts  of  the  law  ;  "  "  Preparing  man  for  this 
life,  the  Lord  himself  did  speak  in  his  own  person  to  all 
alike  the  words  of  the  Decalogue ;  and  therefore,  in  like 
manner,  do  they  remain  permanently  with  us,  receiving,  by 
means  of  his  advent  in  the  flesh,  extension  and  increase, 
but  not  abrogation. "2  If  Irenaeus  and  other  Fathers,  in 
speaking  of  the  Jewish  seventh  day,  or  sabbath  of  their 
time,  had  meant  by  it  the  equivalent  in  all  respects  of  the 
sabbath  of  the  Decalogue,  and  had  intended  to  say  that 
it  was  abrogated,  would  Irenaeus  have  stultified  himself 
by  affirming  that  even  Christ  in  his  advent  did  nothing  to 
abrogate  the  words  of  the  Decalogue  t  Utterly  impossi- 
ble !  He  would  have  made  exception  of  the  Fourth  Com- 
mandment if  he  held  that  that  was  abrogated,  either  by 
Christ  himself  or  his  apostles.  But  Dr.  Hessey,  very 
learned   in    Patristical    lore,    tells    us    that,    after   Paul's 

1  Patrologiae,  Ath.,  torn,  iv,,  p.  138 ;  De  Sab.  et  Cir.,  4. 

2  Cone.  Laod.  Can.,  29;  Morris's  Lib.  Faths.  St.  Ephraem,  p.  391,  note. 

3  Ant.-Nic.  Lib.,  vol.  v.,  pp.  412,  424,  425. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        141 

teaching  on  the  subject,  the  '^  sabbath  was  of  obligation 
no  longer."^  He  interprets  the  Fathers  as  substantiating 
that  view.  Both  he  and  Professor  Hopkins  seem  to  have 
overlooked  most  important  evidence  on  this  point.  Bishop 
Archelaus,  A.D.  277,  replying  to  an  errorist  named  Manes, 
describes  his  error  as  an  **  effort  directed  to  prove  that 
the  law  of  Moses  is  not  consistent  with  the  law  of  Christ," 
and  says,  "  As  to  the  assertion  that  the  sabbath  has 
been  abolished,  we  deny  that  he  has  abolished  it  plainly, 
{plane),  for  he  was  himself  also  Lord  of  the  sabbath.  And 
this  (the  law's  relation  to  the  sabbath)  was  like  the  ser- 
vant who  has  charge  of  the  bridegroom's  couch,  and  who 
prepares  the  same  with  all  carefulness,  and  does  not  suffer 
it  to  be  disturbed  or  touched  by  any  stranger,  but  keeps 
it  intact  against  the  time  of  the  bridegroom's  arrival  ;  so 
that  when  he  is  come  the  bed  may  be  used  as  it  pleases 
himself,  or  as  it  is  granted  to  those  to  use  it  whom  he 
has  bidden  enter  along  with  him."^  Deducible  from  this 
passage  is  the  following  :  i.  Christ  could  abolish  or  change 
the  Decalogue  sabbath.  2.  The  law  kept  it  for  him  till 
he  came.  3.  One  thing  he  did  not  do :  he  did  not  abol- 
ish it.  4.  The  true  sabbath,  therefore,  in  some  sense 
remains,  though  the  followers  of  Christ  do  not  keep  the 
seventh,  but  the  first,  day.  Archelaus  had  the  question 
whether  the  lazv  of  Moses,  in  respect  to  the  sabbath, 
was  abolished.  Other  Fathers  had  the  different  question, 
whether  the  Fourth  Commandment  now  required  the  keep- 
ing of  the  seventh  day.  I  cannot  find  that  Drs.  Hessey 
or  Hopkins,  or  others,  who  hold,  that,  according  to  the 
Fathers,  the  Fourth  Commandment  is  abolished,  have  ever 
seen  this  lamruasie  of  Archelaus.  It  is  not  beneath  their 
notice.  It  is  utterly  inconsistent  with  their  theory.  Dr. 
Hessey  says  in  substance  that  the  Lord's  Day  was  not 
regarded  as  a  sabbath  until  at  least  after  the  fifth  cen- 

1  Sunday,  p.  yj.  2  Ant.-Nic.  Lib.,  vol.  xx.,  p.  y]^. 


142  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

tury.  Not  gene7'ally ;  but  he  should  have  noticed  that 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  not  a  century  after  the  last  of 
the  apostles,  recognized  the  first  day  as  substantially  a 
sabbath,  and  indicated  his  anticipation  that  it  would  yet 
be  called  such.^  We  do  not  find  his  thought  questioned 
by  those  around  him.  It  must  have  been  shared  by 
others. 

This  line  of  interpretation  now  presented  runs  harmo- 
niously through,  I  think,  the  whole  Scriptures,  and  as 
well  through  the  literature  of  early  Christianity.  And 
I  am  confident  that  no  other  theory,  substantially  differ- 
ent from  this,  can  ever  be  made  to  do  it.  Moreover,  the 
non-sabbath  Lord's-Day  men  seem  in  substance  to  con- 
fess judgment  against  themselves,  or  to  yield  the  point 
in  debate,  when  they  are  not  content  without  falling  back 
to  the  law  of  holy  rest  that  they  admit  underlies  both  the 
original  sabbath  and  the  Lord's  Day  ;  or  to  those  princi- 
ples which  they  acknowledge  were  in  the  Fourth  Com- 
mandment, and  may  still  be  appealed  to  in  support  of  the 
first  day.  That  "law,"  those  ''principles,"  we  maintain, 
are  the  moral  elements  of  the  original  and  the  Sinaitic 
sabbath,  existing  still,  and  ever  to  remain. 

Note.  —  This  subject,  and  others  concerning  the  sabbath,  are  to 
be  more  fully  discussed  in  a  series  of  articles  in  "  The  Bibliotheca 
Sacra,"  of  the  present  year,  published  by  W.  F.  Draper,  Andover, 
Mass. 

1  Ant.-Nic.  Lib.,  vol.  xii.,  p.  386. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE   WORD   OF  GOD.       143 


OBLIGATION  OF  ONE  REST-DAY  IN  SEVEN :  SO  THAT 
THE  SEVENTH-DAY  REST  IS  OBLIGATORY,  IF  THE 
FIRST  IS  NOT. 

BY   REV.    PROF.    HENRY    LUMMIS,    OF  WATERTOWN. 

Moral  law  is  binding,  not  because  it  is  found  written  in 
a  code,  but  because  of  its  place  in  the  nature  of  things,  as 
the  order  of  God.  There  are  sources  of  the  Mississippi 
more  original  than  Itasca  Lake,  or  than  the  brooks  by 
which  the  lake  is  fed.  The  springs  which  from  depths 
in  the  earth  bubble  up,  and  form  the  primitive  streams,  are 
the  true  sources  of  the  great  river. 

So  there  are  principles  of  law  more  fundamental  than 
any  code.  The  code,  in  regard  to  many  of  its  enactments, 
may  be  binding  simply  because  of  the  authority  of  the 
lawgiver ;  the  principles,  if  they  belong  to  moral  law,  are 
authoritative  without  enactment  or  promulgation.  Moses, 
Lycurgus,  Solon,  were  eminent  lawgivers.  Once  their 
legislation  had  supreme  authority.  To-day  it  is  null. 
But  the  principles  embodied  in  their  statutes,  so  far  as 
they  were  moral,  are  as  binding  now  as  they  were  twenty- 
four  hundred  or  three  thousand  years  ago.  So  it  must  be. 
Statutory  laws  will  be  continually  changing,  with  changing 
times  :  the  underlying  principles,  if  sound,  are  permanent 
because  they  belong  to  the  immutable  and  eternal  nature 
of  things. 

The  obligation  of  one  day's  rest  in  seven  does  not  grow 
out  of  legislation :  it  lies  deeper ;  it  is  found  in  man's 
nature.  Long  before,  "  Honor  thy  father  and  thy  mother," 
had  been  formulated,  reverence  was  due  to  parents.  The 
obligation  grew  out  of  the  relationship,  and  was  as  incum- 


144  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

bent  before,  as  after,  the  words  had  been  written  in  stone 
by  the  finger  of  God. 

Ere  the  law  of  Moses  contained,  "  Thou  shalt  love  the 
Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and 
with  all  thy  might,"  it  was  man's  duty  to  render  supreme 
love  to  his  Creator. 

In  the  primitive  book  of  God's  zvork,  older,  obscurer, 
it  may  be,  than  that  supplemental  volume,  God's  word,  is 
the  unwritten  law  wherein  must  be  found  the  primary 
ground  of  obligation  for  a  rest-day  for  man,  if  it  is  to  be 
found.  We  need  not  seek  it  in  Genesis,  nor  in  Exodus, 
in  the  Gospels,  nor  in  the  Epistles.  It  antedates  human 
documents,  and  is  earlier  than  a  knowledge  of  letters. 

The  Mosaic  legislation  presupposes  it,  though  it  may 
not  have  been  clearly  apprehended  by  man  prior  to  the 
giving  of  the  law. 

There  were  great  principles  evidently  not  yet  under- 
stood when  Moses  promulgated  his  wonderful  system.  The 
principle  of  prohibition  of  vinous  liquors  needed  clearer 
light  to  find  a  place  in  Jewish  statutes.  Up  to  the  time  of 
David  no  severe  word  had  been  recorded  against  the  use 
of  wine.  Even  the  principle  of  monogamy,  now  so  clearly 
understood,  was  in  the  shadow,  and  polygamy  found  tolera- 
tion under  the  legislation  of  Sinai.  Still  monogamy  was 
the  righteous  principle  then,  as  really  as  noiv.  If  man's 
well-being  requires  one  day's  rest  in  seven,  that  rest  was 
the  fitting  and  so  far  the  obligatory  thing,  for  man,  prior 
to  the  code  of  the  Hebrew  lawgiver.  The  lapse  of  forty- 
three  hundred  years,  however  much  it  has  added  to  human 
knowledge,  has  originated  no  principles. 

It  may  be  asked,  "■  What  is  the  evidence  of  the  need  of 
one  rest-day  in  seven  } "  The  reply  is  :  Such  need  has 
become  so  evident,  that  eminent  statesmen,  successful 
merchants,  and  enterprising  manufacturers  have  long  since 
conceded  the  fact,  simply  on  the  ground  of  political  econo- 


THE  SABBATH  IN"  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.       145 

my.  It  is  shown  by  the  joint  admission  of  employers  and 
employees,  that  in  the  long-run  the  wages  of  a  week  of 
seven  days  is  only  equal  to  the  wages  of  a  week  of  six, 
and  that  the  work  is  no  more  in  the  longer  week  than  in 
the  shorter. 

Lord  Macaulay  in  his  speech  on  the  Ten-Hour  Bill, 
delivered  in  the  House  of  Commons  in  1846,  declares  that 
when  a  Puritan  Government  in  England  had  swept  away 
Easter,  Whitsuntide,  and  Christmas,  it  felt  obliged  to 
institute  new  holidays  ;  and  that  when  the  French  Jaco- 
bins decreed  that  Sunday  should  no  longer  be  a  day  of  res- 
pite from  toil,  they  substituted  every  tenth  day  for  every 
seventh.  Though  they  annulled  the  saints'  days,  they 
put  in  their  place  days  sacred  to  Genius,  to  Opinion,  and 
to  Industry.  These  men  did  not  fear  God,  but  they  did 
recognize  the  necessity  of  days  of  rest.  After  mentioning 
the  fact  that  the  Sundays  of  three  hundred  years  would 
give  fifty  years  of  labor,  if  devoted  to  labor,  Macaulay  says, 
"  For  my  own  part,  I  have  not  the  smallest  doubt  that  if 
we  and  our  ancestors  had  during  the  last  three  centuries 
worked  just  as  hard  on  the  Sundays  as  on  the  week-days, 
we  should  have  been  at  this  moment  a  poorer  people,  and 
a  less  civilized  people,  than  we  are ;  that  there  would  have 
been  less  production  than  there  has  been,  that  the  wages 
of  the  laborer  would  have  been  lower  than  they  are,  and 
that  some  other  nation  would  have  been  now  making  cot- 
ton stuffs  and  woollen  stuffs  and  cutlery  for  the  whole 
world."  "Of  course,"  he  adds,  "I  do  not  mean  to  say 
that  a  man  will  not  produce  more  in  a  week  by  working 
seven  days  than  by  working  six  days ;  but  I  very  much 
doubt  whether  at  the  end  of  a  year  he  will  generally  have 
produced  more  by  working  seven  days  a  week  than  by 
working  six  days  a  week.  .  .  .  We  are  not  poorer,  but 
richer,  because  we  have  through  many  ages  rested  from 
our  labor  one  day  in  seven.     That  day  is  not  lost.     While 


1 46  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

industry  is  suspended,  while  the  plough  lies  in  the  furrow, 
while  the  exchange  is  silent,  while  no  smoke  ascends  from 
the  factory,  a  process  is  going  on,  quite  as  important  to 
the  wealth  of  nations  as  any  process  which  is  performed 
on  more  busy  days.  Man,  the  machine  of  machines,  the 
/machine  compared  with  which  all  the  contrivances  of  the 
Watts  and  the  Arkwrights  are  worthless,  is  repairing  and 
winding  up,  so  that  he  returns  to  his  labors  on  Monday 
with  clearer  intellect,  with  livelier  spirits,  with  renewed 
corporal  vigor.  Never  will  I  believe  that  what  makes  a 
population  stronger,  and  healthier,  and  wiser,  and  better, 
can  ultimately  make  it  poorer."  Note  that  Lord  Macaulay 
spoke  not  as  a  clergyman,  but  as  a  political  economist,  pre- 
senting the  question  not  from  the  religious  but  from  the 
financial  view. 

William  Wilberforce,  in  a  letter  bearing  date  Oct.  8, 
1 81 8,  addressed  to  Christophe,  King  of  Hayti,  writes  :  "I 
well  remember  that  during  the  war,  when  it  was  proposed 
to  work  all  Sunday  in  one  of  the  royal  manufactories,  for 
a  continuance,  not  for  an  occasional  service,  it  was  found 
that  the  workmen  who  obtained  government  consent  to 
abstain  from  working  on  Sundays  executed  in  a  few 
months  even  more  work  than  the  others."  This  testi- 
imony  to  a  matter  of  fact,  from  an  eminent  civilian,  has 
'great  weight.  It  finds  confirmation  from  documents,  both 
'in  our  own  country  and  in  France.  It  has  been  conclu- 
sively shown  that  the  public  work  of  these  nations  con- 
tinued through  seven  days  of  the  week  was  a  losing  en- 
terprise. 

Further  testimony  freely  given  by  men  of  large  business 
experience,  and  showing  clearly  the  economy  of  a  rest-day 
during  the  week,  might  be  given,  did  the  assigned  limits 
allow. 

Eminent  men  of  this  convention,  to  whom  special  assign- 
iment  has  been  made  in  regard  to  the  law  and  advantages 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        1^7 

of  periodic  rest,  render  it  less  important  that  this  point  be 
elaborated  here. 

It  scarcely  needs  to  be  said,  that  if  just  as  much  worldly- 
gain  can  be  secured  by  six  days  work  per  week,  as  by 
seven,  it  is  better  to  have  a  rest  of  one  day  in  seven.  No 
sensible  man  can  be  anxious  to  work  seven  days,  if  he 
earn  just  as  much  by  the  work  of  six.  Will  it  be  said, 
"  While  it  is  evident  that  one  day's  rest  in  seven  is  better 
than  rio  rest,  it  does  not  follow  that  one  day  in  seven  is 
better  than  one  day  in  ten  or  one  day  in  six"  ?  True,  it 
does  not  follow.  But  France  tried  the  experiment  of  one 
rest-day  in  ten,  and  found  the  amount  of  productive  labor 
diminished  by  the  change. 

Attention  is  called,  in  Smith's  Bible  Dictionary,  to  a 
remarkable  pamphlet  by  Pierre  Joseph  Proudhon,  a  noted 
French  socialist,  who  maintains  with  singular  ability  the 
advantage  of  one  rest-day  to  six  work-days,  and  the  incon- 
venience of  any  other  proportion  that  could  be  arranged. 
This  monograph  is  of  special  value,  and,  coming  as  it  does 
from  an  extra-ecclesiastical  source,  must  be  deemed  alto- 
gether disinterested  testimony.  It  meets  the  demand 
properly  made  for  the  reason  of  one  rest-day  in  seven, 
rather  than  in  some  greater  or  less  number. 

It  may  also  be  asked,  naturally  enough,  "  Why  the  first 
or  seventh  day,  rather  than  the  third  or  fifth  } "  Saturday 
has,  almost  from  time  immemorial,  been  the  school  recrea- 
tion day ;  but  Wellesley  College,  without  censure,  adopts 
Monday  as  its  day  of  recreation.  May  the  demand  for 
one  rest-day  in  seven  be  met  with  entire  fitness  by  taking 
Wednesday  or  Thursday  as  that  day  of  rest  t  So  far  as 
unwritten  law  answers,  it  seems  to  give  an  affirmative. 
Any  one  day  of  the  seven,  properly  observed,  is  all  that  is 
called  for  by  that  law  founded  in  the  constitution  of  man. 
The  special  day  must  be  determined  by  some  circum- 
stance of  fitness,  or  by  positive  enactment. 


1 48  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

The  usage  of  different  nations  recognizes  the  principle 
of  one  rest-day  in  seven.  But  the  great  diversity  in 
regard  to  the  day  shows  that  no  specific  day  is  naturally 
indicated. 

Every  day  in  the  week,  somewhere  or  other,  seems  to 
have  beea  separated  from  the  rest  as  a  sacred  day.  The 
great  body  of  Christians  observe  the  first  day  of  the  week, 
the  people  about  Ormaz  and  Goa  solemnize  the  second, 
the  tribes  of  Goa  observe  the  third.  Certain  Christians 
of  the  early  Church  kept  the  fourth  with  fasting  and  with 
public  assemblies  for  prayer.  The  tribes  in  the  territo- 
ries of  the  Mogul  kept  the  fifth.  The  Mohammedan  festi- 
val is  on  the  sixth,  and  Friday  in  the  Catholic  branch  of 
the  Christian  Church  at  least  appears  to  have  had  special 
honor  since  the  days  of  Constantine.  The  sacred  day  of 
the  Jews  is  the  seventh,  and  several  respectable  bodies 
of  Protestant  Christians  are  at  one  with  them  in  regard- 
ing that  day  as  the  sabbath.  In  the  valley  of  the  Nile 
to-day,  both  Saturday  and  Sunday  are  kept  sacred  by  the 
Abyssinians. 

Have  we  well-established  grounds  for  making  one  day 
rather  than  another  the  day  of  rest }  Christians  certainly 
find  in  the  first  day  of  the  week  a  fitness  for  the  day  of 
rest.  Eminent  among  the  grounds  of  that  fitness  is  the 
fact  that  thereon  Christ  rose  from  the  dead.  Bishop 
Wordsworth  thus  enumerates  the  reasons  for  regarding  the 
Lord's  Day  as  the  consecrated  ddij  of  the  week  :  — 

1.  Christ  rose  from  the  dead  on  this  day. 

2.  He  appeared  twice  in  succession  on  this  day. 

3.  He  gave  special  evidence  of  his  resurrection  on  this 
day. 

4.  He  gave  earnest  of  the  Spirit  on  this  day. 

5.  He  sent  the  full  effusion  of  the  Holy  Ghost  to  his 
Church. 

He  subjoins  :  ^'Our  Lord  does  not  seem  to  have  shown 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.       149 

himself  to  his  disciples  in  the  intervening  six  days.  Thus 
he  distinguished  the  first  day  from  all  other  days  of  the 
week  as  his  own  day.  And  the  Holy  Spirit  in  recording 
those  appearances  in  holy  Scripture,  and  by  calling  it  the 
Lord's  Day,  has  consecrated  that  day  to  him." 

These  reasons  are  not  without  weight.  Unless  greater 
or  at  least  equal  reasons  exist  in  regard  to  some  other 
day,  this  first  day  of  the  week  is  entitled  to  precedence,  as 
a  matter  of  fitness. 

There  are,  it  must  be  admitted,  some  difficulties  in 
regard  to  the  reasons  assigned  above ;  not  for  preferring 
this  first  day  of  the  week  as  a  memorial  day  of  the  Lord's 
resurrection,  but  for  its  preference  over  the  seventh  as  a 
rest-day.  The  asserted  authoritative  change  is  a  difficult 
point  to  establish,  as  is  felt  throughout  Protestantism. 

Men  cherish  days  on  which  great  benefactors  were 
born.  The  people  of  this  country  reverence  the  2  2d  of 
February.  Men  regard  the  days  on  which  good  sovereigns 
had  a  birth.  England  shows  special  respect  to  the  24th 
of  May.  There  is  surely  reason  why  we  should  reverence 
the  day  on  which  Jesus  Christ  became  the  first-born  of  the 
dead.  Herein  men  can  agree.  But,  in  the  absence  of  any 
definite  word  in  respect  to  the  change,  can  we  be  quite 
sure  that  he  meant  that  the  first  day  of  the  week  should 
take  the  place  of  the  day  signalized  as  the  rest-day  for  at 
least  fifteen  hundred  years,  possibly  for  four  thousand  or 
even  five  thousand  or  more  t  With  all  respect  for  those 
who  may  deem  the  problem  simple  of  solution,  I  confess 
to  a  consciousness  of  obscurity  here.  And  it  grows,  the 
more  I  study  the  history  of  the  seventh  and  of  the  first 
day.  Is  it  evident  that  Christ,  without  mention  of  the  fact, 
should  have  desired  and  ordained  that  this  first  day  of  the 
week  should  become  the  most  honored  and  sacred  of  all 
days }  Nazareth  was  under  odium  all  his  lifetime,  yet  he 
never  uttered  a  word  to  free  his  own  and  his  mother's 
home  from  its  reproach. 


50  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


Bethlehem,  the  place  of  his  nativity,  honored  as  the 
home  of  his  great  ancestor  David,  he  never  seemed  to  give 
especial  honor  to,  himself,  nor  to  solicit  honor  for  from 
others.  The  day  on  which  he  was  born  he  has  suffered 
to  remain  in  such  obscurity,  that,  though  the  Christian 
Church  has  agreed  for  centuries  to  honor  Christmas,  no 
one  amonsf  all  the  hundreds  of  millions  of  Christendom 
knows  the  day  of  the  week,  nor  of  the  month,  and  no 
one  knows  either  the  month  or  the  year,  in  which  the 
Redeemer  had  his  birth.  I  believe  that  the  apostles 
would  naturally  regard  the  day  as  well  as  the  fact  of  their 
Lord's  resurrection  with  profound  interest :  I  think  I  can 
see  reasons  why  John  at  Patmos  might  first  among  the 
disciples  call  the  first  day  of  the  week  the  Lord's  Day  ;  and 
I  find  no  occasion  for  doubting  that  there  were  religious 
services  connected  therewith,  and  that  this  Lord's  Day 
gradually  took  precedence  of  all  the  days  of  the  week ; 
but  that  in  the  absence  of  specific  command  the  first  day 
of  the  week  took  forthwith  the  place  of  the  ancient  rest- 
day,  and  that  without  controversy  between  the  adherents 
of  the  old  and  the  maintainers  of  the  new,  is  so  out  of  the 
ordinary  course  of  human  proceeding,  that  if  not  inex- 
plicable, it  must  be  admitted  to  be  very  strange. 

The  clear,  definite,  unmistakable  divine  assignment  of 
the  seventh  day  of  the  week  as  the  rest-day  is  in  striking 
contrast  with  a  want  of  assignment  in  the  case  of  the  sub- 
stitution of  the  first  for  the  seventh,  if  it  has  been  really 
made.  No  man  who  believes  the  sacred  record  has  ever 
doubted  that  the  Israelites  were  commanded  to  keep  the 
seventh  day  sacred  as  the  weekly  rest.  But  many  good, 
many  learned  men,  gravely  question  whether  an  authorita- 
tive voice  has  ever  enjoined  such  keeping  of  the  first  day. 
"Remember  the  sabbath  day  to  keep  it  holy,"  was  written 
on  tables  of  stone.  If  that  divine  command  be  still  bind- 
ing, can  it  be  fairly  read,  ''Remember  a  sabbath  day  to 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD    OF  GOD.       151 

keep  it  holy"  ?  If  one  jot  or  tittle  has  passed  from  the 
law,  has  it  not  thereby  become  defective  ?  if  it  has  been 
fulfilled,  is  it  longer  binding  ?  If  "  The  sabbath  was 
made  for  man,"  be  the  enunciation  of  the  universal  and 
everlasting  obligation  of  the  sabbath  law,  can  it  be  other 
than  the  original  law  given  to  Moses  in  the  midst  of  the 
smoke  and  the  fire  and  the  thunderings  of  Mount  Sinai  ? 
And,  if  that  original  law  is  still  in  force,  is  it  legitimate  to 
construe  it,  "  A  sabbath  was  made  for  man "  ?  If  the 
Saviour's  conclusion,  "Therefore  the  Son  of  man  is  Lord 
even  of  the  sabbath  day,"  be  deduced  from  a  premise 
affirming  the  universal  obligation  of  the  sabbath,  he  evi- 
dently disregarded  the  canons  of  Aristotle. 

Again  and  again  the  duty  of  observing  the  seventh-day 
rest  was  urged  and  enforced  upon  the  people  of  Israel. 
Its  neglect  was  censured  and  threatened  ;  the  benefits  of 
its  observance  are  proclaimed  ;  and  the  sin  and  the  folly  of 
its  desecration  are  declared.  Hear  the  prophet  speak  for 
Jehovah  :  *'  If  thou  turn  away  thy  foot  from  the  sabbath, 
from  doing  thy  pleasure  on  my  holy  day,  and  call  the  sab- 
bath a  delight,  the  holy  of  the  Lord,  honorable ;  and  shalt 
honor  him,  not  doing  thine  own  ways,  nor  finding  thine 
own  pleasure,  nor  speaking  thine  own  words  :  then  shalt 
thou  delight  thyself  in  the  Lord  ;  and  I  will  cause  thee  to 
ride  upon  the  high  places  of  the  earth,  and  feed  thee  with 
the  heritage  of  Jacob  thy  father ;  for  the  mouth  of  the 
Lord  hath  spoken  it"  (Isa.  Iviii.  13,  14). 

''The  sons  of  the  stranger  that  join  themselves  to  the 
Lord  to  serve  him,  and  to  love  the  name  of  the  Lord,  to 
be  his  servants,  every  one  that  keepeth  the  sabbath  from 
polluting  it,  and  taketh  hold  of  my  covenant :  even  them 
will  I  bring  to  my  holy  mountain,  and  make  them  joyful 
in  my  house  of  prayer ;  their  burnt  offerings  and  their 
sacrifices  shall  be  accepted  upon  mine  altar ;  for  mine 
house  shall  be  called  a  house  of  prayer  for  all  people" 
(Isa.  Ivi.  6,  7). 


152  SA  BBA  TH  ESS  A  VS. 

"If  ye  diligently  hearken  unto  me,  saith  the  Lord,  to 
bring  in  no  burden  through  the  gates  of  this  city  on  the 
sabbath  day,  but  hallow  the  sabbath  day,  to  do  no  work 
therein  ;  then  shall  there  enter  into  the  gates  of  this  city 
kings  and  princes  sitting  upon  the  throne  of  David,  rid- 
ing in  chariots  and  on  horses,  they  and  their  princes,  the 
men  of  Judah,  and  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem  ;  and  this 
city  shall  be  inhabited  forever"  (Jer.  xvii.  24,  25). 

In  these  specific  mentions  of  the  rest-day  it  was  the 
sabbath,  —  the  day  indicated  in  the  Decalogue.  Would 
it  not  seem  that  a  change,  if  made,  would  have  been  as 
specific  as  was  the  original  designation  of  time  in  the 
law?  Do  not  the  expedients  resorted  to,  to  adjust  the 
problem,  indicate  the  uncertainty  of  the  thing  attempted 
to  be  explained  ?  Would  a  Jew  be  at  any  loss  to  point 
out  his  ground  for  observing  his  rest-day  ? 

It  is  certainly  questionable  whether  the  use  of  the  ex- 
pression ''  the  sabbath''  for  the  first  day  of  the  week  does 
not  imply  a  conclusion  not  warranted  by  the  premises  in 
the  case. 

Perhaps  it  will  be  asked,  "  Does  not  the  essayist  ob- 
serve the  Lord's  Day  as  a  day  of  rest  .^ "  If  he  answer, 
"  Yes,"  how  can  he  consistently  keep  the  first  day,  and  yet 
hold  the  seventh  to  be  more  evidently  binding .? 

Men  are  not  always  consistent.  Embarrassments  may 
be  found  on  both  sides  of  a  question.  The  following 
escape  from  the  dilemma  is  suggested  :  — 

The  legislation  of  Moses  was  not  in  reference  to  one 
day  in  seven  :  it  named  a  specific  day,  the  day  which 
God  originally  hallowed,  because  on  it  he  had  rested  from 
his  work.  This  was  to  be  to  the  Hebrews  a  memorial  of 
their  escape  from  the  bondage  of  Egypt,  a  land  where 
they  had  enjoyed  no  rest-day.  If  God  dealt  with  them 
as  one  deals  with  children  that  need  specific  direction, 
rather  than  as  with  enlightened  men  able  to  comprehend 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE   WORD   OF  GOD.       1 53 

principles,  this  clear  statement  of  written  law  in  the  code 
of  Moses  was  just  what  might  be  expected  to  be  given 
to  this  comparatively  undeveloped  people.  Take  an  illus- 
tration :  I  say  to  my  boy  of  eleven,  "  I  wish  you  to  prac- 
tise your  music  from  ten  to  eleven  o'clock  in  the  morning ; " 
to  my  adult  daughter  I  say,  "■  Arrange  the  time  for  your 
study  and  practice  for  yourself."  Both  are  bound  by  a 
principle,  —  the  one  under  the  specific  detail  of  a  definite 
time  indicated  by  a  specific  command,  when  he  will  be 
fresher  and  better  fitted  to  do  his  work  than  if  a  later  hour 
in  the  day  were  assigned,  after  long  play  had  brought  weari- 
ness if  not  exhaustion  :  the  other  is  free  to  choose  her  time, 
whether  morning  or  evening;  her  developed  inteUigence, 
and  clear  apprehension  of  the  importance  of  progress, 
keep  her  at  work  as  fully  as  would  the  specific  command. 

The  principles  of  the  law  were  as  obligatory  in  the 
days  of  Paul  as  they  were  in  the  days  of  David  ;  but  cir- 
cumcision, which  under  the  law  was  enjoined  with  severe 
penalties  in  case  of  its  omission,  had  become  a  matter 
of  so  little  moment  in  the  days  of  the  apostle,  that  he 
dared  to  assert  the  nothingness  of  circumcision.  If  the 
Decalogue  unchanged  still  binds,  I  see  no  escape  from 
breaking  the  divine  law  except  by  a  prompt  return  to  the 
observance  of  the  seventh  day.  It  may  be  asked,  "  Does 
the  Decalogue,  then,  cease  to  be  binding .?  "  May  we  not 
answer,  "  Yes,  as  specific  legislation,  not  in  the  underly- 
ing principles"  'i  Is  it  not  conceded  that  the  law,  outside 
of  the  Decalogue,  is  abrogated  1  But  the  principles  con- 
tained in  that  law  outside  of  the  Decalogue,  prohibiting 
the  intermarriage  of  near  blood,  bind  to-day  as  really  as 
if  they  were  found  in  the  Decalogue  itself.  And  are  not 
the  principles  therein  requiring  tenderness  to  animals 
authoritative  to-day  ?  Those  enactments  are  not  law  in 
this  land  ;  but  the  principles  may  wisely  be  embodied, 
by  such  benefactors  to  the  dumb  animals  as  Mr.  Bergh, 


154  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

in  the  legislation  of  Pennsylvania  and  of  New  York  and 
of  Massachusetts.  So,  throughout  the  entire  Mosaic  law, 
its  fundamental  moral  principles  will  bear  re-formulating 
for  the  statutory  laws  of  this  nineteenth  century. 

Without  doubt  the  constitution  of  man  requires  a  day 
of  rest.  It  did  so  originally.  If  the  specific  law  given 
to  the  Israelites  is  binding  now  as  really  as  it  was  then, 
must  we  not  all  plead  guilty  to  the  habit  of  disregarding 
that  law  so  far  as  tJie  sabbath  is  concerned  .'*  If,  under 
the  principle  of  the  need  of  one  day's  rest  in  seven,  we 
have  liberty  to  take  the  day  on  which  Christ  arose  from 
the  dead,  a  day  hallowed  by  the  early  Christian  Church, 
and  regarded  with  reverence  almost  universally  for  eigh- 
teen centuries,  consecrated  by  the  associations  and  memo- 
ries and  usages  of  the  saintly  and  the  wise  for  fifty  genera- 
tions, and  honored  by  God's  providence  as  really  as  was 
the  day  of  rest  under  the  Mosaic  legislation,  we  meet  the 
natural  want  as  truly  as  if  we  were  observing  in  the  most 
rigid  conformity  to  the  command  of  the  Decalogue  the 
very  day  anciently  sanctified. 

If,  as  is  conceded  by  the  best  intelligence  of  the  na- 
tions, man's  well-being  requires  a  seventh-day  rest,  the 
duty  of  observing  such  a  rest  is  imperative  even  in  the 
absence  of  formal  statutes.  If  the  days  of  the  Jewish 
dispensation  have  passed  away  along  with  their  code, 
and  if,  under  the  bond  of  natural  obligation  and  evident 
fitness,  we  choose  the  Lord's  Day  as  our  weekly  rest,  are 
we  losers  ?  Are  we  not  rather  great  gainers  }  Fostering 
in  our  hearts  grateful  love  and  glad  remembrance  of  our 
Redeemer,  we  elect  to  honor  his  resurrection-day.  We 
even  name  the  day,  as  is  done  in  Russia,  ''  the  resurrec- 
tion." We  hold  fast  to  the  day  and  its  observance,  not 
under  a  statute  enforced  by  the  death-penalty,  but  as  a 
weekly  Easter  in  which  we  chant  our  joyful  anthem, — 

"  The  Lord  is  risen  indeed  !     Hallelujah !  " 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        155 

No  other  rest-day,  it  must  be  conceded,  has  the  recorded 
divine  authority  which  belongs  to  the  seventh  day.  Here 
it  stands  supreme.  On  the  other  hand,  no  other  day  of 
worship  has  the  consensus  of  so  large  a  part  of  the  human 
family,  no  other  day  is  in  such  harmony  with  the  customs 
of  the  nations  through  many  centuries,  as  the  first  day. 
Even  the  Mohammedans,  with  a  host  of  one  hundred  and 
eighty  millions,  have  no  such  showing  for  their  sacred 
weekly  festival.  The  first  day  may  claim  on  various 
grounds  the  foremost  place  of  the  days  of  the  week 
among  hundreds  of  millions  of  Christians.  And  no  other 
day  than  the  seventh  or  the  first  has  claims  that  can 
pretend  to  transcend  or  even  to  equal  those  of  either  of 
these. 

If  the  highest  intelligence  of  the  highest  civilization, 
and  if  the  uniform  laws  of  the  highest  civilization,  in  this 
nineteenth  century,  grant  the  need  of  a  rest-day  in  every 
week,  and  if  this  law  be  written  in  our  bodies  and  minds 
as  well  as  recognized  in  our  statutes,  we  have  sufficient 
evidence  of  the  obligation  to  observe  one  day  in  seven  ; 
if  no  days  but  the  first  and  seventh  present  so  high  claims 
as  do  these,  if  none  have  any  claim  if  these  do  not,  then 
it  must  be  granted,  that,  if  the  first  day  of  the  week  is  not 
the  day  for  a  day  of  rest,  the  seventh  is ;  if  the  seventh  is 
not,  then  the  first  is. 


1 56  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


THE   SABBATH   AND  THE   LORD'S  DAY:   THEIR  PER- 
MANENT  ELEMENTS  AND   LEGITIMATE   UNION. 

BY   REV.   EDMUND   K.   ALDEN,   D.D.,    OF   BOSTON,   HOME   SECRETARY 
A.B.C.F.M. 

The  sabbath  question  of  the  times  fundamentally  is 
this  :  Has  God  appointed  one  day  in  seven  as  a  sacred 
day  set  apart  in  a  special  sense  for  divine  worship  ?  or  is 
the  distinction  put  upon  one  day  in  seven,  setting  it  apart 
from  the  other  six,  a  human  ordinance,  having  its  impor- 
tant uses,  but  not  of  divine  authority  ? 

We  readily  see  that  all  subordinate  inquiries  as  to  the 
appropriate  methods  of  observing  the  day  must  come  back 
to  this  fundamental  question. 

In  order  to  settle  the  main  question  we  need,  Jirst,  to 
discern  clearly  the  divine  appointment  and  design  of  the 
Old-Testament  sabbath  ;  second,  the  divine  appointment 
and  design  of  the  New-Testament  Lord's  Day ;  and,  thirds 
the  divine  appointment  and  design  of  what  has  descended 
from  both  of  these,  —  the  permanent  Christian  Lord's-Day 
sabbath. 

We  shall  then  be  prepared  to  consider  the  appropriate 
mode  of  observing  the  day,  that  it  may  occupy  the  funda- 
mental position  which  belongs  to  it  as  related  to  the  indi- 
vidual, the  family,  the  church,  and  the  state. 

I.    THE     DIVINE     INSTITUTION     AND    DESIGN     OF    THE     OLD- 
TESTAMENT    SABBATH. 

I.  The  Old-Testament  sabbath  was  a  sacred  day.  This 
is  indicated  in  the  record  of  the  original  institution  of  the 
sabbath  (Gen.  ii.  2,  3),  also  in  the  official  proclamation  in 
the  wilderness  (Exod.  xvi.  23,  xx.  8). 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE   WORD   OF  GOD,        157 

The  fellowship  with  God  in  worship  is  part  of  this 
"hallowing."  Upon  the  sabbath  the  morning  and  even- 
ing sacrifices,  by  command,  were  doubled,  and  the  show- 
bread  kept  upon  the  table  in  the  sanctuary,  indicating 
fellowship  with  God,  was  renewed.  It  is  also  specially 
enjoined  (Lev.  xxiii.  3),  that  the  people  come  together  for 
worship,  "a  holy  convocation,  a  sabbath  of  the  Lord  in 
all  your  dwellings  : "  i.e.,  not  merely  in  your  own  domestic 
habitations,  but  wherever  your  residence  may  be,  the  sab- 
bath is  to  be  a  day  of  holy  convocation  ;  you  are  to  assem- 
ble for  divine  worship.  Note  also  the  significant  juxta- 
position of  the  repeated  precepts  (Lev.  xix.  30,  xxvi.  2), 
"Ye  shall  keep  my  sabbaths,  and  reverence  my  sanctu- 
ary." This  association  of  the  holy  day  with  the  holy 
place  indicates  a  day  sacred  to  worship.  Consider  also 
the  significance  of  the  fact  that  the  observance  of  the 
sabbath  is  spoken  of  as  "a  sign"  between  God  and  his 
people  (Exod.  xxxi.  16,  17).  The  recognition  of  such  a 
covenant,  a  sign  between  the  soul  and  God,  is  an  act  of 
worship  (Ezek.  xx.  12,  20;  Isa.  Iviii.  13).  And  .yet  it  has 
been  maintained,  by  some  flippantly,  by  others  seriously, 
that  the  Jewish  sabbath  was  not  a  day  specially  appointed 
for  religious  worship. 

In  the  history  of  Elisha  we  find  an  interesting  inci- 
dental allusion  which  suggests  the  manner  in  which  in  his 
day  the  sabbath  was  observed  by  the  devout  Israelites  (2 
Kings  iv.  23).  The  afiflicted  Shunammite  woman  is  about 
to  hasten  to  the  prophet ;  and  her  husband,  not  knowing 
of  the  aflfliction,  inquires,  "  Wherefore  wilt  thou  go  to-day, 
seeing  it  is  not  the  sabbath  } "  implying  that  on  the  sab- 
bath day  the  praying  people  gathered  about  the  prophet 
for  instruction  and  worship. 

The  ninety-second  Psalm,  entitled,  "A  Psalm  or  Song 
for  the  Sabbath  Day,"  commences,  "  It  is  a  good  thing  to 
give  thanks  unto  the  Lord,  and  to  sing  praises  unto  thy 


158  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

name,  O  Most  High;"  and  moves  on  to  the  declaration, 
"Those  that  be  planted  in  the  house  of  the  Lord  shall 
flourish  in  the  courts  of  our  God,"  as  though  worship  con- 
stituted an  important  part  of  sabbath-day  observance. 

After  the  establishment  of  synagogues,  during  the 
period  of  Jewish  history  subsequent  to  the  captivity,  com- 
ing down  to  the  days  of  Christ  and  his  apostles,  it  is  a 
well-known  fact  of  history  that  it  was  the  custom  to 
gather  in  those  synagogues  regularly  upon  the  sabbath 
day,  the  Hebrew  scriptures  being  there  read  and  ex- 
pounded. To  this  custom  our  Lord  himself  conformed, 
thus  honoring  the  sabbath  day  as  a  day  specially  for  reli- 
gious worship  (Luke  iv.  16,  vi.  6,  xiii.  10;  see  also  Acts 
xvii.  I,  2). 

We  reach  an  important  conclusion  in  relation  to  the 
whole  sabbath  question,  when  we  see  clearly  that  the  origi- 
nal Old-Testament  sabbath  was  appointed  by  God  prima- 
rily as  a  sacred  rest-day,  —  a  method  by  which  individuals, 
families,  and  communities  were  to  be  lifted  up  into  abid- 
ing fellowship  with  the  holy  God.  Whether  or  not  the 
institution  is  perpetuated  in  the  modern  history  of  the 
world,  this  sabbath  of  the  old  covenant  was  certainly  a 
remarkable  provision  by  which  God  indicated  his  will  that 
men  should  find  their  true  rest  in  communion  with  him- 
self. 

2.  The  Old-Testameiit  sabhath  was  not  only  a  sacred,  it 
was  a  beneficejit  day.  Emphasis  is  put  upon  release  from 
work  one  day  in  seven.  Those  who  might  be  overlooked, 
servants,  strangers,  brute  beasts,  are  particularly  men- 
tioned, so  that  all  may  be  included  in  the  merciful  arrange- 
ment (Deut.  V.  14,  15  ;  Exod.  xxiii.  12). 

Whether  or  not  this  divine  provision  for  man  is  perpet- 
uated, there  was  a  period  in  the  history  of  the  world 
when  God  tenderly  lifted  from  men  the  burden  of  contin- 
uous toil. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        1 59 

3,  Being  a  sacred  and  beneficent  day,  it  was  appointed 
also  to  be  a  joyous  day,  —  the  joy  not  worldly,  but  joy  in 
God  ;  "a  festival  of  holy  rest,"  the  divine  repose  breathed 
into  human  hearts  and  homes,  thanksgiving  and  praise 
ascending  from  these  hearts  and  homes  in  delightful  wor- 
ship ; 

"  Heaven  once  a  week." 

Whether  or  not  the  Old-Testament  sabbath  has  been 
substantially  preserved  in  the  history  of  the  Church,  let  us 
be  grateful  for  the  rich  provision  once  bestowed.  It  was 
a  marvellous  gift  of  God's  grace  to  man. 

Has  God  in  righteous  judgment  taken  it  away  from 
man  ?  Can  it  be  that  Christianity  has  lost  this  blessed 
institution  }  Does  it  not  look  as  though  God  intended  it 
for  the  whole  human  race,  during  all  ages,  since  he  insti- 
tuted it  at  the  close  of  creation  ;  since  he  honored  it  by 
giving  it  a  place  in  the  proclamation  of  the  great  Ten 
Words  from  Sinai;  since  the  reasons  why  it  was  good  for 
man  in  one  period  of  the  world  abide  the  same  at  all 
periods ;  and  since  our  blessed  Lord  himself,  who  honored 
it  throughout  his  earthly  ministry,  and  released  it  from  the 
appended  burdens  which  man,  not  God,  had  put  upon  it, 
declared  emphatically  that  **the  sabbath  was  made  "  not 
for  one  clan,  or  one  generation,  or  one  nation,  but  "for 
man  "  .? 

Are  there  not  indications  also  in  the  glowing  prophecy 
of  Isaiah,  looking  on  to  the  days  of  gospel  triumph,  that 
in  something  which  corresponds  to  the  glad  sabbaths, 
God's  gracious  gift  to  ancient  Israel,  the  Gentiles  too 
shall  share,  when  he  writes,  "  From  one  sabbath  to  an- 
other shall  all  flesh  worship  before  me,  saith  the  Lord"  } 
(Isa.  Ixvi.  22.) 

It  certainly  does  seem  as  though  the  good  Lord  would 
not  take  away  from  the  children  of  men,  unless  he  has 


l60  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

given  them  over  to  a  curse,  so  wonderfully  gracious  a 
provision  as  that  of  the  holy  sabbath.  It  certainly  does 
seem  as  though  Christianity,  which  is  the  heir  of  all  the 
rich  heritage  of  former  days,  must  have  also  inherited 
in  some  form  this  especially  munificent  gift  of  God  to 
man. 

Leaving  the  Old-Testament  sabbath  for  a  time  to  stand 
forth  by  itself  in  its  own  radiant  beauty,  let  us  look  at  an- 
other object  of  equally  radiant  beauty,  one  which  rises 
gradually  before  us  along  the  history  of  the  Christian 
Church,  — 

II.    THE   NEW-TESTAMENT   LORD's    DAY. 

On  the  first  day  of  the  week  the  glad  proclamation 
went  forth  for  all  the  coming  ages,  '*  He  is  not  here :  he 
is  risen."  This  was  the  day,  when,  according  to  Leviti- 
cal  law,  a  sheaf  of  the  first-fruits  of  the  harvest  was 
brought  to  the  priest,  and  he  waved  the  sheaf  before  the 
Lord,  that  the  Lord  might  accept  it  in  their  behalf  (Lev. 
xxiii.  1 1).  By  special  appointment  of  God  it  is  pre- 
arranged from  the  foundation  of  the  world,  that  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  shall  rise  from  the  dead,  not  on  the  sacred 
seventh  day,  but  on  the  succeeding  morning,  the  eighth 
day,  when  the  first-fruits  of  the  harvest  are  waved  before 
the  Lord. 

Another  illustrious  honor  is  in  reserve  for  this  day.  It 
was  Levitical  law,  that,  from  the  morrow  after  the  pass- 
over-sabbath,  the  day  of  the  wave-offering  of  the  first- 
fruits,  seven  sabbaths  should  be  counted  complete,  and 
upon  the  morrow  after  the  seventh  sabbath,  —  the  fiftieth 
day,  Pentecost,  —  there  should  be  another  wave-offering, 
"two  wave-loaves"  before  the  Lord  (Lev.  xxiii.  17-20). 
Then  God  came  down  in  the  inauguration  of  his  third 
sublime  manifestation  of  himself,  the  great  outpouring  of 
the  Holy  Spirit. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD    OF  GOD.        l6l 

Consider  now  the  startling  significance  of  the  fact, 
that  for  these  two  remarkable  events,  fundamentally  con- 
nected with  the  institution  of  the  Christian  Church,  the 
resurrection  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  —  what  was 
the  divine  attestation  that  the  risen  Saviour  was  exalted 
to  dominion  at  the  right  hand  of  God  —  the  advent  on 
earth  of  the  Holy  Comforter,  henceforth  to  abide  as  the 
guiding,  presiding  Presence  and  Power  over  the  Lord's 
people,  —  that,  by  special  divine  appointment  for  both 
these  momentous  events,  the  sacred  seventh  day  is  passed 
by,  and  the  first  day  is  thus  doubly  crowned. 

We  cannot  be  at  all  surprised  at  what  follows.  For 
some  reason  the  first  day  of  the  week  becomes,  among 
believers  in  Christ  everywhere,  the  stated  day  for  Chris- 
tian worship.  No  statute  is  enacted  appointing  it ;  no 
proclamation  is  made  announcing  it :  it  needed  neither 
statute  nor  proclamation.  It  followed  the  resurrection  of 
Christ  and  the  descent  of  the  Holy  Spirit  just  as  regular 
Christian  worship  itself  followed,  —  the  spontaneous  blos- 
soming-forth  of  the  joyous  Christian  heart  delighting  in 
the  risen  glorified  Redeemer,  unfolding  in  peculiar  beauty 
upon  the  first  day  of  the  week  (Acts  xx.  7 ;  i  Cor.  v.  4, 
xi.  17-34).  The  most  significant  and  beautiful  allusion  of 
all  is  given  incidentally,  and  therefore  more  impressive- 
ly, by  the  Apostle  John  in  the  introduction  to  his  Rev- 
elation :  ''I  was  in  the  Spirit  on  the  Lord's  Day."  Just 
as  the  sacramental  feast,  commemorative  of  the  crucified 
Christ,  had  begun  to  receive  the  expressive  name,  ''the 
Lord's  Supper"  (i  Cor.  xi.  20),  so  the  day  when  Chris- 
tians were  accustomed  to  assemble  in  worship  to  com- 
memorate their  risen  Redeemer  received  the  equally  ap- 
propriate name,  "the  Lord's  Day." 

All  this  is  confirmed  by  the  well-attested  history  of 
the  primitive  Church.  No  fact  is  more  indisputable  than 
that  the  early  Christians  did  observe  the  first  day  of  the 


l62  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

week  as  their  particular  day  for  stated  weekly  worship, 
and  that  this  day,  rising  to  pre-eminence  as  a  joyous  day 
of  devout  thanksgiving  in  honor  of  their  risen  Redeemer, 
was  called  "the  Lord's  Day." 

The  testimonies  are  as  interesting  as  they  are  instruc- 
tive. 

Pliny,  writing  to  the  Roman  emperor,  a.  d.  109,  men- 
tions the  fact  that  the  Christians  met  on  a  stated  day, 
^^  stato  die,''  for  the  worship  of  Christ  as  God. 

Justin  Martyn,  about  fifty  years  later,  says,  "  Those  who 
live  in  the  city  and  those  who  live  in  the  country  are  all 
accustomed  to  meet  on  the  day  which  is  denominated 
Sunday,  for  the  reading  of  the  Scriptures,  prayer,  exhorta- 
tion, and  communion.  They  meet  on  Sunday,  because 
this  is  the  first  day,  on  which  God,  having  changed  the 
darkness  and  the  elements,  created  the  world  ;  and  be- 
cause Jesus  our  Lord  on  this  day  arose  from  the  dead." 

Tertullian  at  the  close  of  the  second  century  attests, 
"We  celebrate  Sunday  as  a  joyful  day.  On  the  Lord's 
Day,  we  think  it  wrong  to  fast  or  to  kneel  in  prayer."  ^ 

Clement  of  Alexandria  writes  :  "  A  true  Christian,  ac- 
cording to  the  commands  of  the  gospel,  observes  the  Lord's 
Day  by  casting  out  all  bad  thoughts,  and  cherishing  all 
goodness,  honoring  the  resurrection  of  the  Lord  which 
'itook  place  on  that  day." 

jDionysius  of  Corinth,  A.  D.  170,  mentions  the  "faithful 
.observance  of  the  Lord's  Day,  and  reading  of  the  Scrip- 
tures "  in  the  assemblies  then  gathering. 

Reasons  for  observing  this  day  are  more  fully  presented 
by  Leo  the  Great  (fifth  century)  :  "  On  this  day  the  world 
had  its  origin.     On  the  same  day,  through  the  resurrection 


1  "  Nos  vero,  sicut  accepimus,  solo  die  dominico  resurrectionis  non  ab  isto  tantum 
[geniculis  acbrare]  sed  omni  anxietatis  habitu  et  officio  cavere  debemus,  differentes 
etiam  negotia,  ne  quern  diabolo  locum  demus."  Neander  finds  in  the  passage  indica- 
tions of  a  transfer  of  the  Jewish  law  of  the  sabbath  to  the  Lord's  Day. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD    OF  GOD.       1 63 

of  Christ,  death  came  to  an  end,  and  life  began.  It  was 
upon  this  day  also  that  the  apostles  were  commissioned 
by  the  Lord  to  preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature,  and  to 
offer  to  all  the  world  the  blessings  of  salvation.  On  the 
same  day  came  Christ  into  the  midst  of  his  disciples,  and 
breathed  upon  them,  saying,  'Receive  the  Holy  Ghost.' 
And  finally  on  this  day  the  Holy  Ghost  was  shed  forth 
upon  the  apostles.  So  that  we  see,  as  it  were,  an  or^linance 
from  heaven  evidently  set  before  us,  showing  that  on  this 
day,  on  which  all  the  gifts  of  God's  grace  have  been  vouch- 
safed, we  ought  to  celebrate  the  solemnities  of  Christian 
worship." 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  early  Christians  were  not  ac- 
customed to  call  their  stated  day  of  worship  the  sabbath, 
but  gave  it  a  new  name,  —  "the  Lord's  Day."  This  was 
intentional  on  their  part,  for  obvious  and  important  rea- 
sons. The  seventh-day  sabbath  was  still  an  existing  insti- 
tution in  the  world,  and  was  still  observed  ;  and  'the  early 
Christians  carefully  distinguished  the  two.  As  to  the  ob- 
servance of  the  first  day  of  the  week,  the  Lord's  Day  as 
the  stated  day  for  Christian  worship,  there  was  no  discus- 
sion. The  whole  Christian  Church  sprang  up  in  acclama- 
tion to  welcome  this  day,  and  so  it  continued.  But  as  to 
the  observance  also  of  the  seventh  day,  the  Jewish  sab- 
bath, there  was  difference  both  of  opinion  and  of  practice, 
not  only  in  the  apostolic  age,  but  for  several  subsequent 
centuries. 

The  rites  of  the  Jewish  Church  did  not  suddenly  come 
to  an  end,  and  the  observances  of  the  Christian  Church 
suddenly  take  their  place ;  but  the  change  was  gradual. 
The  two  for  a  time  went  on  toirether.     All  believers  heart- 

o 

ily  entered  into  the  Christian  observance  ;  some  retained 
for  a  time  also  the  Jewish.  We  find  the  apostles,  after 
the  day  of  Pentecost,  going  up  to  the  temple  at  the  regular 
hours  of  morning  and  evening  prayer.     We  find  them  also 


1 64  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

frequenting  the  synagogues  for  worship  upon  the  seventh- 
day  sabbath.  Some  of  the  early  Christians  continued  to 
observe  the  passover  and  other  Jewish  feasts.  Some  con- 
tinued the  practice  of  circumcision  and  various  rites  of 
purification  (comp.  Acts  xxi.  20,  xxiii.  5,  xxiv.  12,  xxv.  8, 
xxviii.  17).  Moreover,  some  began  to  insist  on  these  ob- 
servances as  essential,  and  to  impose  them  as  a  yoke  upon 
Gentile  believers. 

This  explains  the  language  of  Paul  in  the  fourteenth 
chapter  of  Romans,  the  fourth  of  Galatians,  and  the  second 
of  Colossians.  The  discussion  as  to  the  observance  of 
days  refers  to  the  matter  in  hand,  the  compulsory  observ- 
ance of  Jewish  days,  having  reference  to  its  several  feast- 
days,  including  the  seventh-day  sabbath. 

These  injunctions  guard  against  adding  to  Christian 
institutions  compulsory  Jewish  appendages  binding  the 
Christian  conscience ;  e.g.,  against  adding  to  the  Lord's 
Supper  the  Jewish  passover,  and  adding  to  the  Lord's  Day 
the  Jewish  sabbath,  —  a  most  important  principle  ;  but  no 
question  is  raised  as  to  the  observance  of  the  Lord's  Sup- 
per or  the  Lord's  Day. 

As  an  actual  fact  in  the  history  of  the  Church,  the  obser- 
vance of  the  seventh-day  sabbath  in  addition  to  that  of  the 
first  Lord's  Day  continued  down  to  the  fifth  century,  with 
this  difference,  —  that  in  the  Eastern  Church  both  days 
were  regarded  as  joyous,  but  in  the  Western  Church  the 
Jewish  sabbath  was  kept  as  a  fast. 

Theodoret  (fifth  century,  first  part),  writing  of  the  Ebi- 
onites,  says,  "  They  keep  the  sabbath  according  to  Jewish 
law,  and  sanctify  the  Lord's  Day  in  like  manner  as  do  we." 
Both  days  were  solemnized  by  public  religious  assemblies 
for  instruction  and  spiritual  edification,  and  the  observance 
of  the  Lord's  Supper ;  the  Jewish  sabbath  chiefly  by  Jew- 
ish converts  adhering  to  the  custom  of  their  fathers,  —  a 
custom  gradually  discontinued  and  at  length  denounced  as 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.       1 65 

heretical.  The  Council  of  Laodicea,  a.  d.  350,  uses  these 
words  :  "  Christians  ought  not  to  act  as  Jews,  and  rest  from 
labor  on  the  sabbath  "  (i.e.,  Saturday),  "  but  should  work  on 
that  day,  and,  giving  pre-eminent  honor  to  the  Lord's  Day, 
they  ought  then,  if  they  can,  to  rest  from  labor."  The 
Abyssinian  Church  still  observes  both  the  Jewish  sabbath 
and  the  Christian  Sunday.     ( V.  Stanley's  Eastern  Church, 

P-  97) 

The  best-  historical  summing-up  of  Christian  usage  is 
given  by  Eusebius,  early  in  the  fourth  century,  comment- 
ing upon  the  ninety-second  Psalm.  "The  Word  [Christ] 
by  the  new  covenant  translated  and  transferred  the  feast  of 
the  sabbath  to  the  morning  light,  and  gave  us  the  symbol 
of  the  true  rest,  the  saving  Lord's  Day.  ...  On  this  day, 
which  is  the  first  of  the  Light  and  of  the  true  Sun,  we 
assemble  after  an  interval  of  six  days,  and  celebrate  holy 
and  spiritual  sabbath  ;  even  all  nations  redeemed  by  him 
throughout  the  world  assemble,  and  do  those  things  accord- 
ing to  spiritual  law  which  were  decreed  for  the  priests  to 
do  on  the  sabbath.  All  things  which  it  was  duty  to  do  on 
the  sabbath  there  we  have  transferred  to  the  Lord's  Day  as 
more  appropriately  belonging  to  it,  because  it  has  the  pre- 
cedence, and  is  first  in  rank,  and  more  honorable  than  the 
Jewish  sabbath.  It  is  delivered  to  us,  handed  down  by 
tradition,  that  we  should  meet  together  on  this  day ;  and  it 
is  evidence  that  we  should  do  these  things  announced  in 
the  ninety-second  Psalm." 

The  main  point  pertaining  to  this  part  of  our  discussion 
seems  to  be  established  beyond  question, — that  in  the 
Christian  Church  one  day  in  seven,  the  first  day  of  the 
week,  was  set  apart  as  a  day  for  stated  Christian  worship ; 
that  it  specially  commemorated  the  resurrection  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  from  the  dead,  and  received  the  appropri- 
ate name  ''the  Lord's  Day."  Without  express  statute  it 
came  forth  in  the  gladness  of  Christian  believers  beholding 


1 66  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

their  risen  Redeemer,  and  in  the  reception  of  the  great  out- 
pouring of  the  Holy  Spirit,  as  the  spontaneous  expression 
of  the  Lord's  people  pouring  out  hearts  full  of  adoring 
praise  to  Him  who  had  bought  them  with  his  precious 
blood,  and  who  was  worshipped  as  the  exalted  Prince  and 
Saviour,  —  a  day  for  the  exuberance  of  Christian  joy  in 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

May  we  not  reasonably  infer  a  divine  intention  in  the 
method  of  this  appointment  of  the  Lord's  Day  in  the 
Christian  Church  as  a  sacred  day  ?  And  may  not  one 
part  of  that  intention  be  that  the  beauty  and  glory  of 
the  Old-Testament  sabbath  might  be  preserved  and  made 
permanent  in  the  superior  beauty  and  glory  of  the  New- 
Testament  Lord's  Day  ?  This  would  be  in  harmony  with 
every  thing  else  pertaining  to  the  gradual  passing-over  of 
the  Old-Testament  dispensation  into  the  New. 

The  manner  in  which  the  Christian  Church  was  founded, 
and  Christian  institutions  were  established  among  men, 
suggests  that  the  method  of  divine  revelation  was  in- 
tended both  to  test  and  to  train  those  to  whom  it  was 
communicated.  It  tests  their  docility ;  it  trains  them  to 
a  delicate,  thoughtful  appreciation  of  evidence.  No  loud 
proclamation  was  heard  from  heaven,  saying,  "■  Here  end- 
eth  the  Old-Testament  dispensation ;  here  beginneth  the 
New."  The  one  ripened  and  perfected  in  the  other,  the 
same  divine  life  being  in  both.  The  roots  of  the  new  go 
back  to  the  beginning  of  the  old  ;  the  blossoming  and 
fruitage  of  the  old  go  forward  to  the  final  glory  of  the 
new. 

He,  therefore,  who  looks  for  something  sharp  and  ab- 
rupt in  the  termination  of  the  Jewish  Church,  and  the 
planting  of  the  Christian  at  the  same  point  of  time,  so 
that  just  then  and  there  all  that  was  Jewish  ceased,  and 
all  that  was  Christian  sprang  into  instant  life,  will  look 
in  vain.     For  the  wisest  reasons,  some  of  which  it  is  not 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        1 6/ 

difficult  to  discern,  this  was  not  God's  method.  A  unity 
pervades  the  whole  divine  plan,  reaching  back  through  all 
the  centuries  since  the  foundations  of  the  earth  were  laid, 
looking  forward  through  all  the  centuries  unto  the  period 
of  the  new  heavens  and  the  new  earth.  There  are  no 
antagonisms  between  any  of  its  parts  :  each  contributes 
to  the  whole.  Like  the  growth  of  a  tree,  certain  parts, 
having  finished  their  work,  drop  off  and  decay  ;  but  what 
in  their  hour  gave  them  their  life  is  in  the  tree,  and  abides 
permanent,  their  very  decay  contributing  new  life  to  the 
root  and  so  passing  again  into  the  life  of  the  ever-growing 
tree.  Thus  the  life  of  the  New  Testament  springs  out 
of  the  life  of  the  Old ;  and  we  are  not  to  look  for  a  set  of 
authoritative  statutes,  saying,  **  Here  Jewish  institutions 
end,  and  Christian  institutions  begih  ;  henceforth  no  more 
law,  all  is  gospel ; "  but  we  are  rather  to  look  for  such  an 
intermingling  of  the  two,  that  somehow,  we  can  hardly 
tell  how,  the  beauty  and  glory  of  the  old  abide  in  the 
superior  beauty  and  glory  of  the  new. 

Now,  it  is  in  accordance  with  this  interesting  divine 
method  of  revelation,  that,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the 
first  day  of  the  week,  called  "the  Lord's  Day,"  rose  into 
prominence  in  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church,  and 
at  length  practically  took  the  place  of  the  Old-Testament 
sabbath.  There  is  no  command  in  the  New  Testament 
to  observe  the  first  day  of  the  week  as  a  day  of  Christian 
worship.  There  is  no  direct  re-quotation  of  the  Old-Test- 
ament command,  "■  Remember  the  sabbath  day  to  keep  it 
holy."  There  is  no  positive  declaration  saying  that  the 
seventh  day  has  ceased  to  be  binding,  and  that  the  first 
day  henceforth  is  obligatory.  It  would  be  contrary  to  the 
whole  method  of  divine  revelation  in  the  institution  of 
the  Christian  Church  if  there  were.  He  who  declares 
that  he  will  not  be  convinced  that  there  is  any  divinely- 
authoritative  sacred  day  under  the  Christian  system  unless 


1 6S  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

you  can  show  him  the  express  command  in  chapter  and 
verse  saying,  "  Remember  the  first  day  of  the  week  to 
keep  it  holy,"  will  remain  unconvinced.  That  is  not  the 
style  of  evidence  which  God  has  given  ;  and  it  is  as  fool- 
ish as  it  is  impious  to  try  to  force  it  into  the  Scripture 
contrary  to  what  is  the  far  better  and,  to  the  docile  in- 
quirer, far  more  conclusive  evidence,  which  God  has 
given. 

It  is  worthy  of  special  consideration,  that  precisely  the 
same  reasons  which  lead  us  to  desire  the  permanence  of 
the  Old-Testament  sabbath  as  something  so  precious  for 
man,  lead  us  to  desire  the  permanence  of  the  New-Testa- 
ment Lord's  Day  as  something  equally  precious,  and  lead 
us  also  to  desire  that  these  two  may  be  one.  We  want 
the  emphasis  put  by  the  Old-Testament  sabbath  upon  the 
beneficent  provision  of  rest  from  labor,  commemorating 
the  sublime  repose  of  God  after  the  creation  of  the  world  : 
we  want,  also,  the  emphasis  which  is  put  by  the  New- 
Testament  Lord's  Day  upon  the  exultant  worship  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  risen  Redeemer. 

Let  us  elevate  our  expectations.  May  we  not  reason- 
ably hope  that  somehow  these  twain  are  one  in  substan- 
tial principle  and  in  divine  intention,  and  that  we  can 
retain  them  both  in  delightful  harmony  as  the  Christian 
Lord's-Day  sabbath  t  We  love  the  dear  name  ''sabbath," 
the  rest  of  God,  suggesting  our  rest  in  God.  We  love  the 
dear  name  ''  Lord's  Day,"  honoring  our  risen  Redeemer, 
suggesting  our  own  resurrection  in  Christ.  What  if  that 
God,  who  not  only  "  commanded  the  light  to  shine  out  of 
darkness,"  but  who  hath  also  ''shined  in  our  hearts  to 
give  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  in  the 
face  of  Jesus  Christ,"  mindful  of  his  people's  necessities, 
should  have  given  us  both  in  a  glorious  conjunction  ! 

May  it  not  be  true  that  God  has  not  only  blessed  the 
Old-Testament   sabbath,    and   hallowed   it,  has    not  only 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        1 69 

blessed  the  New-Testament  Lord's  Day,  and  hallowed  it, 
but  that  he  has  also  "blessed  the  banns  "  by  which  these 
twain  are  one  ? 

III.  Having  thus  far  considered  the  distinctive  beauty 
of  two  institutions,  the  Old-Testament  sabbath  and  the 
New-Testament  Lord's  Day,  and  having  observed  how  in 
the  providence  of  God  they  have  historically  come  to- 
gether, let  us  now  behold  the  surpassing  beauty  of  the  two 
united,  — 

THE    PERMANENT    LORD's-DAY    SABBATH. 

I .  There  remains  to  us  the  observance  of  one  day  in  seven 
as  a  day  of  glad  worsJiip. 

Methods  of  divine  worship  have  in  some  respects 
changed  as  God  has  revealed  himself  more  fully  to  men  ; 
but  the  substantial  worship  remains,  rising  in  signifi- 
cance, and  increasing  in  spirituality,  as  the  divine  char- 
acter and  will  are  more  clearly  manifested.  Christian 
worship  is  a  higher  style  of  worship  than  the  antedilu- 
vian, the  patriarchial,  or  the  Mosaic  ;  for  what  was  only 
foreshadowed  in  the  ancient  sacrificial  system  is  fulfilled 
in  the  one  sacrifice  offered  upon  Calvary.  "God,  who 
in  sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners  spake  in  time 
past  unto  the  fathers  by  the  prophets,  hath  in  these  last 
days  spoken  unto  us  by  his  Son  :"  the  Son  has  breathed 
upon  his  believing  people,  saying,  *'  Receive  ye  the  Holy 
Ghost."  Christian  worship  is  the  Old-Testament  worship 
sublimely  elevated  through  the  delightful  revelation  of 
God  as  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Spirit.  It  is  a  worship 
which  pre-eminently  magnifies  Christ,  through  whom  alone 
we  approach  the  Father. 

Now,  as  worship  permanently  remains  in  the  history  of 
the  Lord's  people  on  earth  by  being  elevated  into  Chris- 
tian worship,  it  seems  appropriate  that  the  one  sacred  day 


1 70  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

in  seven  should  remain  by  being  also  elevated  so  as  to 
put  peculiar  honor  upon  what  is  distinctively  Christian 
worship.  Since  to  the  record  of  the  first  verse  of  Gene- 
sis, *'  In  the  beginning  God  created  the  heaven  and  the 
earth,"  Christianity  adds  the  first  verses  of  the  Gospel 
according  to  John,  "In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and 
the  Word  was  with  God,  and  the  Word  was  God.  The 
same  was  in  the  beginning  with  God.  All  things  were 
made  by  him  ;  and  without  him  was  not  any  thing  made 
that  was  made," — it  seems  appropriate  that  the  one  day 
in  seven  which  commemorates  the  divine  Creator,  par- 
ticipating in  the  elevation  given  to  worship  through  the 
additional  revelation  of  Christianity  that  **by  Christ  were 
all  things  created,"  should  somehow  specially  honor  God 
in  Christ.  This  in  a  most  interesting  manner  is  effected 
by  the  observance  of  the  first  day  of  the  week  as  the 
Christian's  sacred  day,  extolling  the  risen  Redeemer. 
Recognizing  also  the  advent  of  the  Comforter  upon  the 
same  day,  remembering  that  in  the  creation  of  the  world 
"the  Spirit  of  God  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters," 
we  gratefully  discern  the  peculiar  fitness  of  the  Lord's 
Day  to  the  worship  of  a  God  who  has  been  pleased  in 
these  latter  times  to  manifest  himself  in  his  triune  glory 
as  "  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost."  All  this  is  ours  in 
the  observance  of  the  first  day  of  the  week  as  the  Chris- 
tian's sacred  day,  while  the  original  appointment  of  one 
sacred  day  in  seven  commemorating  the  finished  creation 
remains. 

If  any  importance  be  attached  to  the  divine  appoint- 
ment at  the  close  of  the  six-days'  creation,  re-affirmed  in 
the  proclamation  of  the  moral  law  cut  into  the  tables  of 
stone,  of  one  day  in  seven  set  apart  as  a  day  of  sacred 
rest  for  the  divine  worship,  this  remains  permanent  and 
fundamental  for  the  glory  of  God  and  the  good  of  man  in 
the  Christian  Lord's-Day  sabbath. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        I/I 

2.  TJiei^e  remains  to  21s  a  sacred  seventh  day^  wkieh 
requires  for  its  appropriate  observance  rest  fi'om  the  sccit- 
lar  labors  of  the  six-days'  work. 

It  contemplates  the  gathering  together  of  people  for 
associated  worship,  *'a  holy  convocation."  It  contem- 
plates a  special  sustained  outpouring  of  Christian  hearts 
in  praise  to  the  Lord  who  hath  bought  them.  It  contem- 
plates the  proclamation  and  hearing  of  the  divine  word, 
continuous  periods  of  reverent  communion  with  God,  and 
happy  Christian  fellowship  with  his  people. 

Whatever  constitute  the  best  methods  for  the  appro- 
priate observance  of  a  day  specially  set  apart  by  God  for 
restful  worship,  they  necessarily  imply  cessation  from  the 
secular  labors  of  the  week.  For  there  can  be  no  general 
gathering  of  all  the  people  for  divine  worship  one  day  in 
seven,  unless  there  accompany  it  a  general  laying-aside  of 
the  six-days'  labor.  It  is  not  only  true  that  man,  physi- 
cally and  mentally,  needs  the  rest,  but  he  cannot  perform 
the  duties  and  enter  heartily  into  the  privileges  of  the 
sacred  day  without  the  rest.  That  pre-eminent  joy  in  the 
Lord  which  is  appropriate  to  the  day  can  be  known  only 
by  the  surrender  of  the  entire  being,  free  from  ordinary 
secular  obligations,  to  delightful  spiritual  worship. 

This  emphatic  provision  in  the  ordinance  of  the  Old- 
Testament  sabbath,  cessation  from  servile  work,  to  which 
no  allusion  is  made  in  the  New-Testament  mention  of  the 
Lord's  Day,  is  thus  permanently  secured  as  an  absolute 
necessity  for  the  appropriate  observance  of  a  day  whose 
distinguishing  feature  is  that  all  the  people  shall  assemble 
for  associated  Christian  worship.  This,  therefore,  abides 
as  one  of  the  essential  features  of  the  Christian  Lord's- 
Day  sabbath. 

3.  There  remains  to  ns  a  sacred  seventh  day,  which 
not  only  permits,  but  requires,  the  performance  of  zvhatever 
labors  may  most  efficiently  promMe  its  most  appropriate 
observance. 


1 72  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

This  was  the  principle  emphasized  by  Christ  in  inter- 
preting the  spirit  of  the  Old-Testament  sabbath.  It  is 
the  principle  frequently  reiterated  in  the  administration 
of  the  divine  government,  both  Old  Testament  and  New. 
What  Christ  said  of  the  sabbath  is  true  of  every  divine 
ordinance  :  the  ordinance  was  "made  for  man,  not  man  for 
the  ordinance."  '*  I  will  have  mercy,  and  not  sacrifice," 
is  a  universal  principle  in  the  divine  government,  the 
illustrations  of  which  are  various.  Christ  reminded  those 
arrogant  teachers  of  the  Jewish  law,  who,  that  they 
might  lord  it  over  God's  heritage,  had  taken  pains  to 
forget  this  principle,  that  it  had  always  been  true,  as 
related  to  the  law  of  the  Old-Testament  sabbath.  It  was 
no  new  thought  he  was  uttering,  but  something  which 
belonged  essentially  to  the  institution,  both  in  the  past 
and  the  future  :  viz.,  that  the  law  forbidding  work,  and 
enjoining  rest  in  God  upon  the  sabbath  day,  not  only  did 
not  exclude,  but  required,  acts  of  mercy,  e.  g.,  relieving 
pain  and  satisfying  hunger ;  and  also  that  it  not  only  did 
not  exclude,  but  required,  the  labors  necessary  for  the 
best  religious  observance  of  the  day,  —  it  being,  as  they 
all  knew,  in  certain  respects,  an  unusually  hard-working  day 
for  the  priests,  and  for  the  servants  of  the  tabernacle. 
No  fire  was  to  be  kindled  in  their  habitations  for  the  per- 
formance of  mere  secular  work ;  but  the  show-bread  was 
to  be  baked,  and  presented  anew,  every  sabbath  morning. 
No  secular  work  was  to  be  done ;  but  the  extra-religious 
work  —  offering  the  sacrifices,  attending  the  altar,  and 
caring  for  the  worship  of  the  assembled  convocations  — 
was  to  be  done  with  special  diligence  and  fidelity. 

Since  Christian  believers  are  all  priests  of  the  Lord, 
are  all  the  appointed  servants  of  the  tabernacle,  what- 
ever is  necessary  to  make  the  one  day  in  seven  the  most 
efficient  and  useful  day  for  Christian  worship  is  not  only 
a  permission,  but  a  duty  ;  and  from  some  of  the  Lord's 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        173 

servants  it  calls  for  no  inconsiderable  amount  of  hard 
work.  What  was  true  under  the  Old-Testament  dispen- 
sation being  more  emphatically  true  under  the  New,  this 
principle  abides  in  the  Christian  Lord's-Day  sabbath. 

4.  There  remains  to  its  a  sacred  seventh  day,  whose  ap^ 
propriate  observance  is  essential  to  the  permanent  establish- 
ment among  meji  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ. 

It  is  vitally  connected  with  all  Christian  institutions, 
particularly  with  the  growth,  the  spirituality,  and  efficiency 
of  the  Christian  Church,  and  with  the  successful  proclama- 
tion of  the  gospel  throughout  the  world.  No  statement 
can  be  more  clearly  established  than  that  the  Lord's-Day 
sabbath  is  central  and  fundamental,  as  related  to  the  high- 
est welfare  of  the  individual,  the  family,  the  church,  and 
the  commonwealth ;  and  as  such  it  abides  permanently 
a  divinely-appointed  institution  among  men,  one  of  God's 
most  precious  gifts. 

No  generation  of  men  has  yet  appreciated  this  gift  as  it 
ought  to  be  appreciated.  Some  have  grossly  abused  it. 
We  all  need  to  re-invigorate  our  faith  as  to  what  this  one 
day  in  seven  is,  contemplating  its  beauty  as  it  comes  forth 
from  its  two  divine  sources,  —  the  Old-Testament  sabbath 
and  the  New-Testament  Lord's  Day  harmoniously  united, 
a  permanent  divine  benediction  among  men.  Whatever 
else  it  may  be,  or  may  not  be,  these  principles  abide : 
(i)  It  is  a  sacre^  day,  set  apart  by  God,  in  a  special 
sense,  for  elevated  Christian  worship.  (2)  In  the  ac- 
complishment of  this  design,  it  necessarily  requires  ces- 
sation from  the  secular  labors  of  the  six-days'  work. 
(3)  It  both  permits  and  demands  the  performance  of 
all  labor  necessary  for  the  best  appropriate  observance 
of  the  day.  (4)  Its  appropriate  observance,  according  to 
its  beneficent  design,  is  essential  to  the  permanent  estab- 
lishment among  men  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ. 


1 74  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


INFERENCES. 

I.  The  theoiy  which  ivotdd  make  the  Lord's  Day  a  day 
for  amnscinent,for  recreation,  for  an  agreeable  change  of 
worldly  piLi'snits,  or  for  idleness ,  has  no  foundation  at  all 
upon  which  to  rest. 

It  is  a  sacred  day  set  apart  for  divine  worship,  or  there 
is  no  such  day  at  all.  Men  may  pervert  it  into  a  holiday, 
they  may  abuse  it  as  a  day  in  which  sin  shall  not  only  not 
be  restrained,  but  shall  run  riot ;  or  they  may  be  grateful 
for  it  as  a  day  of  leisure,  each  man  to  use  it  according  to 
his  own  taste,  —  some  in  reviewing  the  business  of  the 
week,  finishing  up  their  accounts  and  planning  for  the 
week  to  come,  some  in  mere  rest  of  body  and  of  mind, 
some  in  reading  up  the  news  or  in  literary  pursuits,  some 
in  social  entertainments,  and  so  on.  These  things  may  be 
appropriate  for  the  observance  of  a  holiday,  or  a  day  of 
leisure ;  but  they  do  not  constitute  the  observance  of  the 
Lord's  Day ;  they  do  not  constitute  holy  repose  of  the  soul 
in  God,  nor  the  joyous  worship  of  the  risen  Redeemer. 

Whatever  be  the  theory  of  the  origin  of  a  special  seventh 
day,  whether  it  come  from  the  Old-Testament  sabbath, 
the  New-Testament  Lord's  Day,  or  the  spirit  of  the  two 
united,  it  makes  no  provision  for  a  day  of  worldly  recrea- 
tion and  amusement.  If  that  is  needed,  we  must  provide 
for  it  in  some  other  way.  This  provides  that  one  day  in 
seven  shall  be  a  sacred  day  set  apart  for  special  worship, 
the  hearts  of  men  gladly  engaging  in  the  continuous 
praise  of  God,  and  for  this  purpose  uniting  in  Christian 
assemblies. 

This,  then,  becomes  the  simple,  practical  sabbath-ques- 
tion :  How  shall  Christian  communities  so  observe  the  one 
day  in  seven  as  to  make  it  most  efficient  for  Christian  wor- 
ship }  How,  as  individuals,  as  families,  as  congregations, 
shall  we  best  praise  the  glorious  Redeemer }  How  shall 
we  lead  others  to  do  the  same  t 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    IVORD   OF  GOD.        1 75 

To  this  test  bring  your  practical  inquiries  as  to  methods 
of  sabbath  observance,  and  most  of  them  are  easily  an- 
swered. Are  they  expressions  of  Christian  worship,  and 
do  they  contribute  to  make  the  day  a  day  set  apart  for 
Christian  worship,  so  distinguishing  it  from  the  other  days 
of  the  week  ?  If  so,  they  are  not  only  permitted,  they  are 
required.  Sabbath  observance  is  not  negative.  Sabbath 
observance  is  positive ;  the  special  outpouring  of  grateful 
hearts  in  praise  of  the  Lord  of  the  sabbath.  The  test- 
question,  then,  as  to  sabbath-day  excursions  for  pleasure, 
riding,  walking,  visiting,  opening  and  frequenting  places 
of  amusement,  opening  and  frequenting  public  libraries 
or  galleries  of  art,  and  all  similar  inquiries,  is  the  same 
simple  question  in  every  case :  Are  these  the  expressions 
of  Christian  worship,  and  are  they,  in  a  social  community, 
helpful  to  Christian  worship  t  If  so,  they  are  not  only 
permitted,  they  are  required,  just  as  some  walking,  some 
riding,  and  some  preparation  for  religious  worship,  are 
required.  If  not,  then  these,  cannot  constitute  the  appro- 
priate observance  of  the  Lord's  Day.  Whatever  else  may 
be  said  of  the  application  of  this  principle,  it  certainly 
excludes  the  theory  that  the  one  day  in  seven  is  to  be 
regarded  as  a  day  of  worldly  amusement,  recreation,  mere 
idleness,  or  change  of  pursuit.  If  there  be  any  such  day 
at  all  as  the  Lord's-Day  sabbath,  it  is  a  sacred  day  set 
apart  for  Christian  worship. 

II.  It  is  cqtially  plain  that  such  a  day  as  this,  a  day  set 
apart  for  worsJiip,  to  Christian  hearts  is  not  a  servile,  biir- 
densome  day,  but  an  exceeding  great  joy. 

It  was  so  under  the  Old-Testament  dispensation  ;  it  is 
so  still  more  emphatically  under  the  New. 

Men  talk  about  the  severity  of  the  ancient  Jewish  sab- 
bath. Where  did  we  get  the  eighty-fourth  Psalm,  the 
ninety-second  Psalm,  the  one  hundred  and  nineteenth 
Psalm,  the  one  hundred  and  twenty-second  Psalm  ? 


176  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

One  of  the  distinguishing  characteristics  of  the  Chris- 
tian heart  is  joy  in  the  Lord  :  to  have  the  privilege  of 
expressing  this  in  worship,  is  the  sweetest  dehght.  It 
continually  breaks  forth  through  all  the  necessary  labors 
of  the  six  days ;  and,  when  the  opportunity  of  one  whole 
day  in  seven  comes,  it  runs  to  the  Lord  like  a  released 
child,  so  glad  to  be  at  home  in  the  abiding  fellowship  of 
Christ  and  his  people,  finding  here  a  foretaste  of  the 
anticipated  blessedness  of  an  everlasting  heaven.  If  the 
spirit  of  joyous  worship  in  the  Lord  is  not  in  the  heart, 
then,  indeed,  a  day  set  apart  for  the  expression  of  that 
worship  may  be  burdensome  and  servile  ;  and  this  may 
tell  the  story  as  to  the  heart  that  finds  it  so. 

Much  has  been  said,  repeated,  and  continued  to  be 
repeated,  in  certain  quarters,  as  to  the  severity  and  ser- 
vility of  the  New-England  Pilgrim  and  Puritan  sabbath, 
the  revered  Lord's  Day  set  apart  for  worship.  With  some, 
this  is  a  favorite  theme  for  pert  or  sarcastic  remark.  I 
venture  to  call  in  question  the  competence  of  these  self- 
appointed  critics.  Why  not  take  the  testimony  of  the 
Pilgrim  and  Puritan  himself } 

When  our  fathers  drew  toward  Plymouth  Harbor  in  the 
cold  and  storm,  beating  their  way  up  from  Cape  Cod  coast 
in  the  shallop,  landed  on  Clark's  Island  early  Saturday 
afternoon,  so  as  to  make  preparation  for  the  coming  rest- 
day,  and  then  spent  that  day  in  devout  worship,  who 
imagines  that  this  was  to  them  a  severe  and  servile  day } 
Their  hearts  poured  themselves  out  in  prayer  and  praise 
to  that  God  whose  Fourth  Commandment  they  so  delighted 
in,  that  they  left  Holland,  and  came  to  this  unknown  land, 
for  the  avowed  purpose  of  keeping  sacred  the  holy  sabbath 
day.  This  is  the  first  of  the  five  reasons  which  induced 
them  to  emigrate,  as  given  by  Secretary  Morton  :  "  Inas- 
much, that,  in  ten  years'  time,  whilst  their  church  so- 
journed  amongst   them,  they  could    not   bring   them   to 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE   WORD   OF  GOD.       1 7/ 

reform  the  neglect  of  the  observance  of  the  Lord's  Day 
as  a  sabbath,  nor  keep  their  own  famihes  from  the  sur- 
rounding infection."  Read  the  testimony  of  Gov.  Brad- 
ford, himself  one  of  the  eighteen  explorers,  who,  after  their 
perilous  escape,  kept  that  grateful  sabbath.  "  But  though 
this  had  been  a  day  and  night  of  much  trouble  and  danger 
unto  them,  yet  God  gave  them  a  morning  of  comfort  and 
refreshing  (as  usually  he  doth  to  his  children) ;  for  the 
next  day  was  a  fair,  sun-shining  day,  and  they  found  them- 
selves to  be  on  an  island,  secure  from  the  Indians,  where 
they  might  dry  their  stuff,  fix  their  pieces,  and  rest  them- 
selves, and  give  God  thanks  for  his  mercies  in  their  mani- 
fold deliverances.  And,  this  being  the  last  day  of  the 
week,  they  prepared  to  keep  the  sabbath."  Picture  them 
adding  a  new  music  to  that  of  the  waves  and  the  winds, 
the  high-sounding  praises  of  God,  as  Deacon  John  Carver 
**  lines  a  psalm,"  which  all  sing  with  uplifted  heart  and 
voice,  accompanied  with  prayer  and  elevated  discourse 
upon  the  great  themes  of  God  and  godliness. 

Take  the  testimony  of  one  of  the  descendants  of  that 
mate  of  "The  Mayflower,"  for  whom  Clark's  Island  is 
named. 

"We  do  the  Puritans  great  injustice  to  suppose  that  in  their 
strict,  punctih'ous  life  on  the  Lord's  Day,  they  were  acting  under  any 
other  restraint  than  that  of  the  love  they  bore  to  the  Lord  of  the  sab- 
bath ;  which  did,  indeed,  constrain  them  to  keep  their  hearts  and 
hands  disencumbered,  as  far  as  possible,  from  the  world,  that  they 
might  the  more  readily  '  be  filled  with  all  the  fulness  of  God,'  and 
which,  by  imposing  a  truce  on  their  social  intercourse,  left  them  more 
free  to  commune  with  Christ.  When,  in  accordance  with  prevailing 
usage  in  New  England,  they  suspended  all  secular  toil  at  the  going- 
down  of  the  sun  on  Saturday,  and  began  their  sabbath  service  with 
an  evening  prayer,  a  psalm,  and  a  season  of  solitary  self-examination, 
it  was  with  more  gladness  of  heart  than  that  which  Burns  ascribes  to 
the  '  Cotter's  '  children  on  coming  home,  after  the  week's  drudgery  is 
over,  to  exchange  salutations  around  the  old  hearthstone,  and  receive 
anew  the  paternal  benediction.  ...    In  like  manner,  with  a  keen 


1 78  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

spiritual  relish  for  holy  time,  holy  acts,  holy  pleasures,  they  arose 
the  next  morning  earlier  than  on  other  days,  revolving  in  their  hearts 
the  words  of  David  :  '  Awake  up,  my  glory :  awake,  psaltery  and  harp : 
I  myself  will  awake  early.'  And  so  through  the  day,  '  private  medi- 
tation, family  devotion,  and  public  worship  engaged  their  delighted 
and  unflagging  souls  till  the  sun  went  down.'"  —  Dr.  Joseph  S. 
Clark,  Co?igregatio7ial  Quarterly,  1859. 

Add  the  testimony  of  a  representative  of  Puritanism, 
on  the  other  side  of  the  water,  John  Owen  :  — 

"  For  my  part,  I  must  not  only  say,  but  plead,  while  I  live  in  this 
world,  and  leave  this  testimony  to  the  present  and  future  ages,  that 
if  ever  I  have  seen  any  thing  of  the  ways  and  worship  of  God,  wherein 
the  power  of  religion  or  godliness  hath  been  expressed ;  any  thing 
that  hath  represented  the  holiness  of  the  gospel,  and  the  author  of 
it;  any  thing  that  looked  like  a  prelude  to  the  everlasting  sabbath, 
and  rest  with  God,  which  we  aim,  through  grace,  to  come  unto,  —  it 
hath  been  there,  and  with  them,  where  and  among  whom  the  Lord's 
Day  hath  been  held  in  highest  esteem,  and  a  strict  observation  of 
it  attended  unto  as  an  ordinance  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ." 

Bring  in  the  testimony  of  our  beautiful  sabbath-hymns. 
What  kind  of  hearts  wrote  them  .?  What  kind  of  hearts 
have  sung  them  with  most  exultant  joy? 

"  One  day  amid  the  place 

Where  my  dear  Lord  hath  been 
Is  sweeter  than  ten  thousand  days 
Of  pleasurable  sin." 

When  I  hear  a  man  speaking  depreciatingly  of  what  he 
calls  "the  hard,  stern,  strict  sabbath"  of  the  pious  Jew, 
the  godly  Puritan,  or  the  devout  Scotch,  I  feel  like  saying 
to  him,  ''  Sir,  speak  for  yourself ;  but  do  not  undertake 
to  speak  for  the  holy  men  and  women  whose  whole  souls 
went  out  in  praise  to  God,  hailing  the  day  you  call  'hard 
and  strict,'  as  a  type  of  the  heaven  of  whose  blessedness 
they  are  now  participants."  Hard,  servile,  and  strict,  to 
worship  God  one  day  in  seven }     Speak  for  yourself,  O 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE    WORD   OF  GOD.        1 79 

wise  man  of  the  nineteenth  century,  but  not  for  your 
godly  sires.  When  you  know  as  they  knew  —  God  grant 
you  may !  —  what  the  worship  of  God  is,  what  the  exultant 
joy  of  a  soul  resting  in  the  risen  Redeemer  is,  you  may 
speak  for  them  who  know  the  same ;  and,  when  you  do, 
you  will  testify  that  there  is  no  day  so  joyous  to  the 
Christian  heart  as  the  sacred  day  of  the  Lord. 

III.  We  see  the  cause  of  the  main  practical  difficulty 
as  to  the  sabbatJi-question. 

It  arises  from  the  endeavor  to  adapt  God's  sabbath  to 
the  unrenewed  human  heart,  to  make  a  day  specially  set 
apart  for  the  joyous  worship  of  God  agreeable  to  those 
who  have  no  joy  in  the  worship  of  God.  It  is  a  tough 
problem  to  solve. 

Suppose  we  try  the  same  experiment  with  the  Lord's 
Supper.  "  The  Lord's  Supper,  as  now  observed,  is  a  dry, 
uninteresting  service, — exceeding  servile  to  sit  still,  take 
a  bit  of  bread,  taste  of  a  little  wine,  and  have  long  prayers 
over  it."  So  some  would  say.  Now  what  ?  **The  Lord's 
Supper  is  a  Christian  ordinance,  and  we  ought  to  observe 
it.  It  should  be  made  interesting  to  everybody.  There- 
fore change  it  to  a  social  festive  entertainment,  which  will 
be  universally  popular ;  "  i.  e.,  degrade  and  desecrate  the 
sacredness  of  the  service,  to  make  it  pleasing  to  sinful 
hearts.     This  you  pronounce  sacrilege. 

Apply  the  same  reasoning  to  the  sacred  Lord's  Day,  a 
holy  day,  set  apart  for  divine  worship.  Are  people  to  be 
elevated  and  trained  to  its  joyous  appropriate  observance, 
or  is  the  day  to  be  desecrated,  to  be  made  agreeable  to 
sinful  hearts  }  This  is  the  sabbath-question  of  our  times. 
Shall  we  have  a  sacred  day,  honored  by  God  as  a  day  for 
glad  Christian  worship,  and  shall  we  seek  to  be  in  the 
appropriate  spirit  for  such  a  day,  so  that  we  shall  delight 
in  such  a  day,  and  so  shall  we  be  lifted  up  by  this  blessed 
provision  of  divine  grace  for  needy  man  }  or  will  we  pull 


1 80  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

down  God's  day  to  our  own  pleasure  ?  It  is  a  momentous 
question  as  related  to  all  dear  to  Christian  hearts,  Chris- 
tian homes,  and  a  Christian  commonwealth.  It  touches, 
as  has  been  appropriately  said,  "  the  spinal  column  of  the 
body  politic." 

IV.  We  see  the  need  of  recognizing  divine  authority^ 
giving  divijie  sanction  to  the  sacred  observance  of  the 
permanent  one  day  in  seven  as  tJie  Christian  Lord' s-Day 
sabbath.  Man  needs  not  only  the  invitation  and  the  privi- 
lege, but  the  command,  just  as  he  needs  other  commands. 
Sinful  man  is  wilful  and  wayward,  and  requires  restraint 
as  well  as  guidance.  He  requires  admonition  as  well  as 
invitation.  Christian  believers  need  the  command  as  well 
as  the  invitation  ;  for  some  of  us  have  but  little  grace  as 
yet,  and  the  best  of  us  are  exceedingly  imperfect. 

No  man,  however  holy,  has  yet  observed  God's  sabbath 
as  he  ought  to  have  observed  it.  No  community  has  yet 
observed  it  as  it  ought  to  be  observed.  We  are  far  from 
having  learned  how  much  of  the  riches  of  divine  grace  for 
man  is  wrapped  up  in  this  one  day  in  seven,  thrice  blessed 
as  the  sabbath,  as  the  Lord's  Day,  and  as  the  twain  made 
one.  We  need  reverently  and  heartily  to  accept  this 
munificent  divine  gift,  both  as  an  authoritative  command 
and  as  a  precious  trust ;  to  prepare  for  it  by  making  the 
six-days'  work  contribute  to  its  growing  spiritual  life ;  to 
make  the  most  of  it  in  all  its  possible  efficiency  as  a  day 
of  Christian  power  in  worship,  and  in  the  proclamation  of 
the  divine  word ;  and  then  sacredly  to  guard  it  as  some- 
thing fundamental,  vitally  related  to  the  home,  to  society, 
to  the  permanence  of  all  Christian  institutions,  and  to  the 
extension  of  Christ's  kingdom  on  earth. 

God  hasten  the  promised  time  when  the  blessed  one  day 
in  seven  shall  not  only  be  permanently  secure  to  those 
who  love  it,  but  when  all  men  shall  love  it ;  when,  as  the 
morning  of  each  Lord's  Day  dawns,  with  its  serene  divine 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE   WORD   OF  GOD.       l8l 

benediction,  upon  every  nation  and  kingdom  and  people 
and  tongue,  the  fulfilment  of  the  glowing  prophecy  of 
Isaiah  shall  illumine  the  whole  world  with  a  belt  of 
light !    ''  From    one    sabbath    to   another    shall   all 

FLESH    COME    TO    WORSHIP    BEFORE    ME,  SAITH    THE    LORD." 

"  Oh  !  let  me  take  thee  at  the  bound, 

Leaping  with  thee  from  seven  to  seven, 
Till  that  we  both,  being  tossed  from  earth, 
Fly  hand  in  hand  to  heaven." 


n. 
Historical. 


THE   SABBATH    IN    HISTORY. 


THE   PRE-MOSAIC   SABBATH. 

BY   REV.   JOSHUA  T.   TUCKER,   D.D.,   OF   BOSTON. 

It  is  immaterial  to  the  purpose  of  this  essay,  how  long 
the  appearance  of  man  on  this  planet,  as  a  reasonable  and 
responsible  being,  may  have  antedated  the  Hebrew  exodus. 
Nor  does  it  now  matter  what  may  have  been  the  method 
of  that  appearance ;  whether  as  an  instantaneous  creation 
of  man  in  physical  and  spiritual  completeness,  or  the  in- 
breathing from  God  of  a  rational  and  moral  nature  into  a 
previously  existing  and  properly  developed  anthropoid. 
It  is  enough  for  this  discussion  to  fix  this  starting-point, 
that,  by  the  will  of  God,  a  date  was  reached  in  time  when 
this  earth  became  the  abode  of  a  man  who  was  ''  a  living 
soul,"  capable  of  mental  growth,  susceptible  of  moral 
impressions,  endowed  with  an  accountable  will,  and,  so  far 
forth  as  is  possible  to  the  finite,  standing  in  the  image  of 
his  Maker. 

The  next  event  in  the  record,  after  the  advent  of  man, 
is  the  formal  declaration  of  the  resting  of  God  from  his 
creative  work  (Gen.  ii.  1-3).  It  does  not  matter  to  the 
force  of  this  fact  upon  our  present  inquiry,  what  may  have 
been  the  length  of  the  periods  called  days  in  this  earliest 
narrative.  Be  they  longer  or  shorter,  they  severally  mark 
some   limit   in   duration,  —  a   beginning   and   an  ending. 

185 


1 86  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

And,  when  the  sixth  had  completed  itself,  then  to  the 
seventh  and  last  period  God  gave  the  distinctive  character 
which  separated  it  from  the  others  as  a  day  made  holy,  by 
his  example  and  implied  precept,  for  other  uses  than  the 
former.  If  this  rest-day  of  the  Lord  far  exceeded  in  du- 
ration any  thing  known  to  us  as  a  day,  it  would  not  follow 
that  this  was  not  intended  as  an  institutional  act,  set  up 
at  the  very  commencement  of  human  life,  by  which  to 
model  a  regularly  recurring  interval  of  sacred  repose  and 
worship  during  all  succeeding  generations  of  humanity. 
For  the  question  of  the  sabbath  stands  quite  clear  from 
cosmogonic  theories.  Its  essential  element  is  not  a  time- 
element,  but  a  spiritual  idea  and  obligation.  Hardly  any 
one  now  will  dispute  the  scientific  conclusion  that  those 
primeval  evenings  and  mornings  were  age-long  succes- 
sions, rather  than  a  modern  calendar  week.  Hence  it  is 
inferred  by  some,  that,  as,  our  sabbath  cannot  have  any 
such  prolonging  as  that  divine  sabbath,  no  reasoning  is 
admissible  from  it  to  ours,  as  holding  us  to  this  observance. 
This  is  putting  the  matter  on  a  very  mechanical  basis. 
A  better  view  of  it  is  this,  that  a  comparison  is  here  obvi- 
ous between  God's  time  and  works,  which  are  projected  on 
a  divine  scale,  and  man's  time  and  works,  which  are  finite 
and  of  earthly  limitations.  God  made  the  universe  in  six 
of  his  mysteriously  measured  days,  and  rested  on  the 
seventh.  The  working  and  the  resting  were  each  on  the 
scale  of  his  own  infinitude.  Man  works  out  his  six  short 
days  on  the  small  circle  of  a  human  and  mortal  life,  and 
keeps  his  sabbath  at  their  end.  God,  out  of  his  own  im- 
measurable life,  gives  us  a  pattern  to  follow  in  our  narrow 
term  of  being.  Whether  the  story  as  we  have  it  in  Gene- 
sis be  history  or  allegory,  it  carries  this  moral  instruction, 
that  He  who  made  all  things  by  regular  stages  of  progress, 
through  what  we  may  call  his  creative  week,  ceased  from 
his  accomplished  labor  at   its  close,  and   kept  a  sabbath 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  18/ 

commensurate  with  that  labor  and  with  his  own  uncreated 
being.  Therefore  man,  his  child,  made  in  his  likeness 
and  for  the  same  spiritual  ends,  should  regulate  his  activi- 
ties on  the  same  plan  of  working  and  resting,  conforming 
thus  to  the  example  of  the  highest  wisdom,  both  in  the 
sphere  of  a  natural  and  a  spiritual  existence.  In  this  we 
are  entitled  to  see  not  an  arbitrary  arrangement,  but  the 
revelation  of  an  absolutely  essential  law  of  rational  life 
in  its  dependent  forms.  \ 

The  argument  so  far  is  rather  from  analogy  than  from  \ 
express  commandment.  The  line  of  thought  is  legitimate,  j 
for  it  is  formally  brought  forward  as  an  argument  in  the 
Decalogue.  Whether  the  Old-Testament  sabbath  forms 
any  obligatory  ground  for  the  Christian  Lord's  Day  or 
not,  the  connection  between  the  creation-sabbath  and  the 
Mosaic  is  unquestionable,  as  is  also  the  reason  for  that 
connection.  When  Jehovah,  through  Moses  on  Sinai,  had 
enjoined  upon  Israel  the  keeping  of  a  specified  day  of  holy 
time,  he  added  this  enforcement  of  the  precept :  "  For  in 
six  days  the  Lord  made  heaven  and  earth,  the  sea,  and  all 
that  in  them  is,  and  rested  the  seventh  day ;  wherefore 
the  Lord  blessed  the  sabbath  day,  and  hallowed  it."  This 
positive  enactment,  uttered  some  twenty-five  hundred 
years,  according  to  the  popular  chronology,  after  the  end- 
ing of  creation,  is  linked  by  a  firm  bond  with  the  day 
which  God  then  blessed  and  sanctified.  The  sabbath  of 
Moses  is.  a  clear  outcome  of  the  earlier  institution.  The 
great  World-Builder,  who  needed  no  rest,  because  he  nei- 
ther faints  nor  is  weary,  puts  himself,  in  this  statute,  as  if 
on  a  level  with  his  working  and  wearied  offspring,  and 
condescends  to  a  repose  from  his  long  days  of  unfatiguing 
toil,  that  he  may  give  the  force  of  a  divine  sympathy  as 
well  as  the  authority  of  a  divine  mandate,  to  his  chosen 
people,  to  conclude  every  sixth  of  their  brief  week-days 
with  a  blessed  and  hallowed  seventh  like  his  own.     "  Like 


1 88  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

his  own,"  that  is,  so  far  as  the  two  cases  can  be  brought 
into  parallehsm.  For  it  is  captious,  and  not  critical,  to 
demand  an  exact  correspondence  between  these  lines  of 
comparison.  As  there  was  a  most  natural,  if  not  neces- 
sary, diverseness  between  the  periods  of  the  divine  week 
in  Genesis,  and  the  subsequent  sun-divided  days  of  man's 
appointed  week,  which  nevertheless  did  not  break  the 
analogy  between  them  ;  so  there  is  an  absolutely  necessary 
difference  between  God's  sabbatic  rest  and  ours,  while  the 
resemblance  is  strongly  marked,  and  the  innermost  mean- 
ing of  both  is  identical. 

This  is  the  interpretation  put  upon  the  pre-Mosaic  sab- 
bath by  the  Fourth  Commandment :  God  rested  on  the 
seventh  day  ;  so  should  the  Hebrew.  God  made  that  day 
a  separated,  a  sacred  day ;  so  should  the  Hebrew.  We  go 
back,  then,  to  the  beginning,  and  ask  for  the  significance 
of  this  divine  blessing  and  hallowing  of  the  creation-sab- 
bath. Did  the  Lord  make  that  day  holy  for  himself,  or  for 
men  .^  ''  The  sabbath  was  made  for  man,"  said  Jesus  ;  the 
rest-day  of  divine  ordaining  and  re-ordaining.  To  confine 
this  sanctifying  of  the  primeval,  the  Edenic  rest-day,  to 
its  divine  Institutor  (as  some  attempt),  thus  cutting  it 
off  from  subsequent  human  relations  at  least  until  the 
Mosaic  epoch,  is  to  make  it  meaningless.  We  can  attach 
no  idea  to  a  God-sabbath,  whether  of  holy  rest  or  devotion, 
except  as  related  to  the  human  offspring  of  God.  He 
blessed  and  hallowed  his  own  sabbatic  day  as  something 
which  should  project  itself  into  the  days  to  come,  for  the 
use  and  enjoyment  of  others.  "Blessing  the  day  means 
blessing  it  for  some  purpose :  it  is  the  expression  of  God 
the  Creator's  love  to  it  as  a  holy  and  beneficent  thing 
among  the  things  of  time,  as  carrying  ever  with  it  some- 
thing of  God,  some  idea  of  the  Blesser,  and  of  the  love  and 
reverence  due  to  him  as  the  fountain  of  all  blessedness 
and  of  all  blessed  things.     So  the  blessing  upon  man  (in 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY. 


the  day  of  his  creation,  male  and  female,  in  the  divine  like- 
ness, Gen.  i.  26,  27)  looks  down  through  all  the  genera- 
tions of  man."i  God  made  the  seventh  part  of  time  holy, 
by  reserving  it  for  his  own  peculiar  worship  and  service  : 
not  for  self  worship  and  service,  but  for  these  as  a  homage 
from  his  children  and  subjects.  The  whole  arrangement 
has  a  paternal  and  filial  aspect,  —  the  benediction  of  the 
Eternal  Father  upon  mankind  through  this  ever-returning 
memorial  of  his  creating  and  sustaining  care.  ''  It  is  ele- 
vating a  portion  of  the  human  time  to  the  standard,  or  in 
the  direction  at  least,  of  God's  own  eternal  sabbath  ; "  ^ 
so  to  bring  up  humanity  to  the  plane  from  which  it  is  far 
enough  removed  at  present,  when  all  its  days  shall  be 
thoroughly  hallowed  by  the  spirit  and  works  of  righteous- 
ness, as  are  the  ages  of  the  ever  holy  and  blessed  Lord.% 
That  were  a  consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished  ;  but  the  l 
way  to  make  every  day  a  true  sabbath  is  not  by  abolishing  \ 
what  remnant  of  Sunday  we  still  have. 

It  seems  to  be  a  morally  unavoidable  conclusion,  for 
which  we  now  are  ready,  that  the  sabbath  announced  in 
Eden  was  intended  to  be  of  perpetual  obligation  ;  that, 
whether  or  not  the  Sinaitic  sabbath  was  ordained  for  Gen- 
tile as  well  as  Jew,  the  original  rest-day  was  made  univer- 
sally for  the  human  race.  This,  however,  is  not  my  special 
line  of  inquiry.  Having  found  a  sabbath  at  each  terminus 
of  the  pre-Mosaic  period,  it  is  now  in  order  to  ask  how 
this  benign  institution  fared  in  the  interval  thus  bounded } 
The  line  of  travel  through  this  piece  of  history  is  not  very 
open  and  easy ;  but  something  may  be  done  in  the  way  of 
its  satisfactory  exploration. 

Two  facts  pertinent  to  the  subject  stand  out  clearly  on  \ 
that  early  record.     The  first  is  a  seve7ifold  division  of  time.    \ 
This  was  not  confined  to  the  Hebrew  race,  though  of  com-     i 
mon   mention   in   its  remotest  annals.      The  same  thing 

1  Tayler  Lewis. 


1 90  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

belonged  to  all  the  Shemitic  peoples,  to  the  Egyptians, 
and  even  to  some  of  the  South-American  tribes.  What 
was  the  origin  of  this  septenary  time-table  ?  In  some  of 
the  later  registers  and  other  documents  of  those  ancient 
nations,  this  arrangement  of  time  is  referred  to  astronomi- 
cal phenomena,  to  the  movements  of  the  moon  and  other 
celestial  bodies  ;  but  this  appears  rather  to  have  been  a 
subsequent  conventional  explanation  of  a  long-recognized 
fact,  than  a  true  accounting  for  that  fact.  To  get  at  the 
root  of  the  mystic  pre-eminence  of  the  number  seven 
requires  a  deeper  search  than  to  say  that  seven  was  the 
number  of  the  primary  planets,  or  that  the  eight  tones  of 
the  musical  scale  are  divided  by  seven  intervals.  A  week 
of  seven  days,  from  the  very  dawn  of  time,  is  not  adequate- 
ly explained  as  the  division  of  a  lunar  month  into  four 
parts.  For  the  twenty-nine  and  a  half  days  of  a  regular 
lunation,  divided  by  four,  does  not  give  an  even  quotient, 
but  leaves  a  continual  balance  of  troublesome  fractions  to 
disturb  the  reckoning ;  while  the  successive  quarterings  of 
the  moon  are  not  sharply  enough  cut  to  serve  for  an  accu- 
rate weekly  measurement.  Back  of  all  these  ''after- 
thoughts," as  they  have  been  aptly  called,  a  much  more 
elementary  cause  is  required.  The  Hebrews  had  it,  and 
-recognized  it,  in  the  creation-week  of  seven  evenings  and 
-mornings  constituting  the  cosmogonal  days.  There  is  no 
^question  that  the  Jewish  week  was  counted  from  the  sab- 
bath, from  the  beginning.  It  is  reasonably  supposable  that 
this  primitive  division  of  time  into  seven  days  went  over  by 
tradition,  after  the  deluge,  into  the  recollection  of  the  na- 
tions which  were  organized  subsequently  to  the  dispersion 
at  Babel,  just  as  the  fact  of  the  deluge  itself  was  perpetu- 
ated through  nearly  the  whole  earth  in  this  way,  even  into 
its  most  barbarian  corners.  And  this  meets  the  objection 
that  the  earlier  Hebrews  could  not  have  gotten  their  seven- 
.  day  week  from  the  genesis,  because  the  biblical  Genesis 


777^  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  191 

was  not  written  until  the  Mosaic  age.  It  was  written  in 
the  living  thought  and  speech  of  the  race  as  inerasably  as 
was  the  Flood,  or  the  migration  of  Abraham.  From  the 
same  source,  also,  came  the  septenary  adjustments  of  reli- 
gious and  national  festivals  in  Palestine ;  and  the  well- 
known  mystical  completeness  ascribed  to  the  number  seven 
among  this  people.  How  did  seven  thus  come  to  be  a 
sacred  or  perfect  number  1  There  is  nothing  in  itself  to 
give  it  this  distinction  or  value.  It  has  no  arithmetical 
claim  to  such  importance.  Running  back  from  it  the  scale 
of  numeration,  some  reason  may  be  discovered  why  one  of 
the  previous  numbers  might  have  been  so  dignified.  Thus, 
six  is  the  double  triplet  or  triad ;  five  told  off  the  digits, 
whence  sprung  the  decimal  notation  ;  four  marked  the 
square ;  three  the  triangle  ;  two  terminated  the  line ;  one 
is  the  initial  point,  the  all-combining  unit.  Each  of  these 
has  more  apparent  title  to  the  place  assigned  to  seven  than 
it  can  show;  yet  seven  was  the  Hebrew  ''perfect  number," 
without  any  inherent  justifying  quality,  as  far  back  as  his- 
tory reaches.^  It  seems  too  obvious  to  need  more  than  a 
statement,  that  this  was  a  consequence  of  the  same  seven- 
fold creative  work  which  gave  the  sons  of  Adam  their 
week  of  seven  days,  the  earth  over ;  the  last  of  which  days, 
and  the  date  of  all  succeeding  reckonings,  was  the  sabbath.^ 
The  second  fact  is  the  equally  constant  reference  to 
formal  acts  of  religious  worship  during  the  pre-Mosaic  age. 
It  will  hardly  do  to  infer  (as  some  have  done)  a  weekly 
service  of  public  devotion  from  the  words  in  Gen.  iv., 
''Then  began  men  to  call  on  the  name  of  the  Lord," 
even  if  this  were  the  right  rendering  of  the  text ;  much 
less  when  it  should  be  read,  "  Then  began  men  to  call  out, 
to  proclaim,  the  name  Jehovah,"  as  the  divine  name  for 

1  The  following  are  some  of  these  early  references  :  Gen,  iv.  15,  vii.  3,  4,  viii.  10, 
12,  xxi.  30,  xxix.  18,  20,  27,  30,  1.  10 ;  Job  ii.  13,  xlii.  8;  Exod.  vii.  25. 

2  Comp.  Lange  on  Genesis. 


1 92  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

the  future,  instead  of  Elohim,  the  creating  God.  (See 
Lange's  "  Genesis.")  But  even  earlier  than  that  we  have  a 
sabbatic  hint  in  the  offerings  which  Cain  and  Abel  brought 
to  the  Lord  "at  the  end  of  days," — a  weekly  custom 
already,  one  might  think,  without  any  severe  straining  of 
the  record.  Compare  with  this  ending  of  days  the  not 
unlike  intimation  in  the  Book  of  Job  :  "  There  was  a  day 
when  the  sons  of  God  came  to  present  themselves  before 
the  Lord."  This  was  for  sacrificial  worship,  as  was  the 
other  ;  and  it  is  every  way  probable  that  these  solemn 
appearances  ''  before  the  Lord  "  were  on  fixed  days,  with- 
out which  such  observances  have  never  been  permanent. 
Three  times,  "at  the  end  of  seven  days,"  Noah  sent  forth 
the  dove  from  the  opened  window  of  the  ark.  This  proved 
,  that  the  old  voyager  kept  up  his  weekly  reckoning ;  and 
[it  is  not  presumable  that  so  long  and  faithful  "  a  preacher 
of  righteousness  "  would  have  forgotten  when  the  sabbath 
I  came  around.  The  patriarchal  history  is  full  of  the  build- 
ing of  altars  unto  the  Lord,  wherever  Abraham  and  his 
children  travelled  or  abode.  It  is  hardly  conceivable  that 
their  Bethels  should  have  had  no  sabbaths. 

But  against  this  view  the  objection  of  Paley  and  oth- 
ers, who  wish  to  make  the  sabbath  an  exclusively  Jewish 
affair,  is  still  urged,  —  that  no  express  mention  of  this  sev- 
enth-day rest  is  found  from  Adam  to  the  exodus.  If  this 
be  literally  true,  it  does  not  shut  out  an  inferential  recog- 
nition of  the  day,  as  we  have  seen.  Strange  as  this 
silence  seems  at  first  glance,  it  is  to  be  considered  that 
the  entire  record  of  at  least  twenty-five  centuries  is  com- 
pressed into  what  would  make  a  thin  pamphlet  of  some 
sixty  or  seventy  pages,  where  only  the  bare  skeleton  of 
what  took  place  during  that  long  period  could  have  men- 
tion. Professor  Phelps  has  reckoned  that  the  sabbath  is 
mentioned  only  five  times  in  the  Hebrew  scriptures  from 
Moses  to  the  return  from  the  Babylonian  captivity,  some 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  193 

one  thousand  years  of  much  more  stirring  interest. 
From  Joshua  to  David,  five  hundred  years,  the  day  is 
not  once  referred  to,^  yet  certainly  it  was  then  a  regular 
institution.  Some  things  have  to  be  taken  for  granted  in 
writing  out  such  memorials  ;  and  the  things  apt  to  be 
omitted  are  those  which,  by  common  consent,  are  looked 
upon  as  matter-of-course  occurrences.  It  is  very  probable 
that  sabbath-keeping  habits  fell  off  into  much  neglect 
durinsf  the  bad  times  of  antediluvian  violence  and  of  the 
Egyptian  bondage.  But  the  silence  of  Scripture,  whether 
in  enjoining  this  observance,  or  in  reproving  its  cessa- 
tion, does  not  prove  that  there  was  no  sabbath  then.  On 
the  contrary,  there  is  good  proof  that  the  sabbath  sur- 
vived the  irreligious  influences  of  those  many  centuries. 
It  is  found  in  the  significant  word  with  which  the  fourth 
command  of  the  Decalogue  begins  :  *'  Remember  the  sab- 
bath day  to  keep  it  holy."  This  is  not  the  phrasing  of  a 
new  injunction.  No  statute  de  novo  of  Church  or  State 
commences  so.  Nobody  can  remember  what  never  hap- 
pened. It  was  not  a  caution  for  the  future,  but  a  precept 
for  the  then  present.  It  did  not  say,  ^'  By  and  by,  when 
you  shall  be  in  danger  of  forgetting  this  commandment, 
don't  do  it."  It  bade  them  primarily  and  at  that  hour 
to  remember  the  sabbath  rest  and  worship  which  had  been 
the  precious  heirloom  of  their  race  since  God  blessed  and 
hallowed  the  seventh  day  in  Eden  ;  which  was  now  to  be 
re-enacted  under  more  impressive  sanctions  in  connection 
with  those  other  nine  everlasting  words  of  Jehovah.  Turn 
back  now  from  the  twentieth  chapter  of  Exodus,  where 
these  commandments  are  recorded,  to  the  sixteenth,  which 
narrates  an  event  that  occurred  some  weeks  before.  It 
was  the  supplying  of  Israel  with  the  daily  manna.  No- 
tice the  following  language  when  it  was  reported  to  Moses 
that,  on  the  sixth  day,  the  people  had  gathered  a  double 

1  Phelps  on  the  Sabbath,  p.  31. 


194  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

measure,  contrary  to  general  orders.      ''And  he  said  unto 
\   them,  This  is  that  which  the  Lord  hath  said  :  To-morrow 
\  is  the  rest  of  the  holy  sabbath  unto  the  Lord  :  bake  that 
which  ye  will  bake  to-day,  and  seethe  that  ye  will  seethe  ; 
\  and  that  which  remaineth  over,  lay  up  for  you  to  be  kept 
•  until  the  morning.  .  .  .  And  Moses  said.  Eat  that  to-day ; 
for  to-day  is  a  sabbath  unto  the  Lord.   .  .  .   Six  days  shall 
I  ye  gather  it ;  but  on  the  seventh  day,  the  sabbath,  in  it 
j  there  shall  be  none."     This  is  the  language  of  recognition, 
\  not  of  institution  ;  and  it   is  in   entire  keeping  with  the 
command  to  ''remember"  the  day  of  rest.     In  the  light  of 
these  plain  recognitions,  it  is  not  a  forced  exegesis  which 
holds  that  the  attempt  of  Moses  in  Egypt  was  to  lighten 
the  oppressive  burdens  of  Israel  by  securing  for  them  the 
seventh-day  rest.     That  was  Pharaoh's  charge  against  the 
Hebrew  chiefs  :    "  Behold,  the   people  are  many,  yet   ye 
make    them    sabbatize    (rest)    from    their   burdens."     So, 
when  the  petition  was  pressed  at  the  court  of   Pharaoh, 
/   that  the  people  should  be  let  go  to  hold  a  feast  of  sacri- 
I    ficial  worship  in  the  wilderness,  it  seems    to  have  been 
I     mainly  this,  —  that  they  might  keep  unmolested  the  hal- 
lowed day  to  which  their  awakening  religious  feelings  were 
urging    them  ;  which  they  could    not    do  in    presence  of 
their  pagan  enemies  who  held  as  deities  the  very  animals 
which  the  Jews  slew  upon  their  altars. 

According  to  the  view  thus  presented,  the  separating 
of  a  seventh  part  of  time  to  God,  in  cessation  from  need- 
less labor,  and  in  the  services  of  religious  worship  and 
well-doing,  did  not  begin  with  the  apostles,  nor  at  Sinai 
under  Moses,  but  had  its  origin  and  authenticating  seal  at 
the  end  of  creation,  as  necessary  then  for  man's  right 
physical  and  spiritual  growth ;  therefore  presumably  ne- 
!  cessary  ever  since.  Even  Dr.  Hessey,  while  strenuously 
\  denying  any  formal  connection  between  the  Lord's  Day 
and  the  Jewish  sabbath,  concedes   that  there  is  a  moral 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  195 

element  in  the  Fourth  Commandment,  and  hence  some 
moral  obligation  to  observe  it  religiously ;  and,  further, 
''that  the  creation  labor  and  rest  were  exemplary,  typical, 
and  consolatory.,  and  were  so  understood  by  the  writers  of 
Holy  Scripture,  and  by  the  Fathers."  ^  It  may  be  added, 
that,  so  far  as  we  can  understand  its  spirit  and  method, 
the  pre-Mosaic  sabbath  was,  at  many  points,  in  closer 
harmony  with  the  Christian  Lord's  Day  than  was  the 
Levitical  sabbath.  The  latter  was  the  sabbath,  specifical- 
ly, of  a  national-political  dispensation,  carrying  forward 
into  this  theocratic  regime  the  religious  purpose  of  its 
predecessor,  and  much  more  besides.  The  sabbath  of  the 
patriarchs,  and  of  yet  earlier  saints,  was  of  a  simpler  spir- 
ituality, a  freer,  more  elastic  devotion  ;  less  bound  by  for- 
mal restrictions  ;  more  in  tone,  as  should  be  ours,  with 
the  worship,  the  rest,  the  service,  of  the  second  and  per- 
petual Paradise. 

1  Bampton  Lectures,  pp.  23,  24. 


SABBATH  ESSAYS. 


THE   SABBATH   IN   JEWISH   HISTORY. 

BY   REV.   ALVAH   HOVEY,    D.D.    LL.D.,    PRESIDENT    OF   NEWTON  THEO- 
LOGICAL  INSTITUTION,    NEWTON   CENTRE,    MASS. 

We  may  begin  our  sketch  of  the  sabbath  in  Jewish  his- 
tory with  recognition  of  the  fact  that  there  is  evidence 
of  an  ante-Mosaic  and  primeval  sabbath,  intended  for  all 
mankind.  This  evidence  is  comprised  in  a  remarkable 
passage  of  Genesis  (ii.  2,  3),  which  declares  that  God  rested 
from  the  work  of  creation  on  the  seventh  day,  and  hal- 
lowed that  day ;  in  traces  of  a  weekly  division  of  time, 
especially  among  the  descendants  of  Shem,  but  also  in 
Babylon  before  the  era  of  Moses ;  and  in  traditions  of 
reverence  for  the  number  seven,  as  pre-eminently  sacred. 

But  while  the  passage  in  Genesis,  and  the  traces  of  a 
primeval  sabbath  just  named,  are  sufficient  to  warrant  a 
belief  that  a  weekly  day  of  rest  was  instituted  by  Jehovah 
in  Eden,  there  is  evidence,  on  the  other  hand,  that  in  the 
time  of  Moses  this  day  was  no  longer  remembered  and 
kept  as  holy  by  any  large  part  of  mankind.  It  is  even 
probable  that  the  children  of  Israel  had  gradually  ceased 
to  observe  it  during  the  later  years  of  their  sojourn  in 
Egypt.  A  long  period  of  prosperity  in  a  land  where  idol- 
worship  and  self-indulgence  prevailed  must  have  tended 
to  darken  their  minds  and  corrupt  their  manners  ;  while 
the  subsequent  period  of  dreadful  suffering,  under  a  jeal- 
ous monarch  and  heartless  taskmasters,  must  have  ren- 
dered any  outward  observance  of  the  sabbath  impossible. 
It  cannot  therefore  be  surprising  if,  as  we  suppose,  a 
sort  of  Egyptian  darkness  settled  down  upon  the  reli- 
gious life  of  the  Israelites,  and  if,  in  consequence  of  this, 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  1 97 

there  was  little,  if  any,  worship  at  set  times  during  the 
later  years  of  their  residence  in  Goshen. 

Accordingly,  when  the  sabbath  was  re-instituted  at 
Sinai,  it  must  have  seemed  to  the  people  who  were  truly 
devout  a  fresh  gift  from  God,  and,  to  the  undevout,  a  new 
check  upon  their  worldliness.  Naturally  enough,  though 
the  command  to  '*  remember  the  sabbath  day,  and  keep  it 
holy,"  was  assigned  a  place  on  the  tablets  of  stone,  there 
were  some  who  disregarded  it  in  the  wilderness,  and 
brought  upon  themselves  the  just  judgment  of  God.  But 
we  walk  in  twilight,  even  though  we  have  the  Pentateuch 
in  our  hands,  if  we  seek  to  discover  many  traces  of  the 
holy  day  in  the  life  of  Israel  under  Moses.  Yet  there  is 
good  reason  to  believe  that  it  was  generally  observed, 
at  least  by  resting  from  secular  employments,  during  the 
period  of  wandering  in  the  desert,  and  from  the  entrance 
into  Canaan  until  the  death  of  Joshua  and  his  contem- 
poraries. But  the  same  cannot  be  said  of  it  in  the  stormy 
and  unsettled  times  that  succeeded  the  death  of  this  great 
captain  and  of  the  elders  that  outlived  him.  For,  when 
the  people  *'did  evil  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord,"  and  "fol- 
lowed the  gods  of  the  nations  round  about  them  "  (Judg. 
ii.  ii),  as  they  did  at  intervals  until  the  days  of  Samuel, 
it  is  to  be  presumed  that  they  desecrated  the  sabbath  by 
doing  forbidden  work  and  by  offering  sacrifice  to  idols. 
Yet  the  twilight  of  history  continues ;  for  there  is  no 
reference  to  the  sabbath  in  the  books  of  Joshua,  Judges, 
and  Ruth  ;  and  all  we  can  do  is  to  infer  a  disregard  of  the 
sabbath  from  the  general  disorder  of  the  times  and  from 
the  asserted  idolatry  of  the  people.  It  would,  however, 
be  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  there  were  none  who 
remembered  the  former  days,  and  worshipped  the  God  of 
their  fathers. 

From  the  time  of  Samuel  until  the  nation  was  rent  in 
twain,  the  weekly  day  of  rest  must  have  been  generally 


198  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

observed.  Though  nothing  is  said  of  it  in  the  books  of 
Samuel,  or  in  the  first  book  of  Kings,  there  is  sufficient 
evidence  in  the  character  of  the  prophet-judge,  and  in  the 
devout  spirit  of  David,  as  well  as  in  the  organized  temple- 
worship  under  Solomon,  to  justify  a  very  confident  belief 
that  the  sabbath  was  remembered  by  the  nation,  and  hal- 
lowed by  those  whose  hearts  were  true  to  Jehovah.  This 
period  of  nearly  two  hundred  years  was  the  golden  age  of 
Israel ;  and  throughout  these  generations  of  increasing 
strength  and  fame  the  seventh  day  of  the  week,  as  all 
reverent  and  impartial  scholars  must  admit,  was  honored 
as  a  day  of  rest  and  worship.  And  it  was  this  observance 
of  the  sabbath,  together  with  their  religious  life  in  other 
respects,  which  made  the  nation  prosperous. 

But  the  wisdom  of  Solomon,  and  his  royal  provision  for 
worship  in  the  house  of  the  Lord,  did  not  prevent  his 
tolerance  of  idolatry  from  corrupting  the  morals  of  the 
people,  and  weakening  their  reverence  for  the  law  of 
Moses.  The  heavens  began  to  be  dark  in  the  latter  part 
of  his  reign,  and  predictions  of  evil  were  uttered  by  one 
at  least  of  the  prophets  of  Jehovah.  Yet  the  holy  day 
was  doubtless  kept  by  most  of  the  nation  till  the  death 
of  this  sagacious  but  splendor-loving  and  degenerate  mon- 
arch. 

From  the  division  of  the  nation  until  the  Jews  were 
carried  away  captive  into  Babylon,  we  find  here  and  there 
indications  that  the  sabbath  was  known  to  the  people, 
and  kept  when  the  other  statutes  of  the  Mosaic  law  were 
kept.  But  the  language  of  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  Ezekiel, 
if  carefully  examined,  will  prove  that  the  holy  day  was 
profaned  much  of  the  time  by  many  of  the  people.  Under 
irreligious  kings  true  worship  was  neglected,  and  multi- 
tudes treated  the  seventh  day  of  the  week  like  any  other 
day. 

Thus  it  is  said  of  Ahaz,  who  reigned  sixteen  years  in 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  1 99 

Jerusalem,  that  he  walked  in  the  way  of  the  kings  of 
Israel,  that  he  sacrificed  and  burnt  incense  in  high  places, 
that  he  made  his  son  to  pass  through  the  fire,  that  he  cut 
in  pieces  the  vessels  of  the  house  of  God,  that  he  shut  up 
the  doors  of  the  temple,  and  that  he  made  himself  altars 
in  every  corner  of  Jerusalem  (2  Kings  xvi.  2-4 ;  2  Chron. 
xxviii.  1-4).  Under  such  a  king  the  sabbath  was  certain 
to  be  desecrated.  He  was  followed  on  the  throne  by  the 
good  King  Hezekiah  ;  but,  when  Hezekiah  died,  Manasseh 
took  the  kingdom,  and  reigned  fifty-five  years  in  Jerusalem, 
doing  what  was  evil  in  the  sight  of  the  Xord.  For  he 
rebuilt  the  high  places  which  his  father  had  destroyed, 
together  with  altars  to  Baal  and  all  the  host  of  heaven, 
placing  the  latter  in  the  two  courts  of  the  temple.  He 
also  worshipped  all  the  host  of  heaven,  made  his  son  pass 
through  the  fire  to  Moloch,  used  magic  and  divination, 
and  dealt  with  necromancers  and  wizards  (2  Kings  xxi. 
2-6).  He  was  succeeded  by  Amon,  a  son  after  his  like- 
ness, who  reigned  but  two  years  ;  and  then  by  Josiah,  his 
pious  grandson,  who  came  to  the  throne  at  eight,  and 
reigned  till  he  was  twenty-six  before  the  book  of  the  law 
was  discovered  in  the  house  of  the  Lord.  So  universal 
and  complete  had  been  the  apostacy  of  Judah,  during  the 
years  of  Manasseh's  reign,  that  Josiah  had  never  seen  a 
copy  of  the  book  of  the  law,  or  heard  that  such  a  book 
was  in  existence.  We  may  therefore,  making  all  due 
allowance  for  the  special  wickedness  of  the  royal  family  \ 
at  that  time,  be  certain  that  for  half  a  century  the  sabbath  ] 
was  either  deliberately  profaned,  or  quietly  ignored,  by  a 
majority  of  the  Jews.  That  other  times  were  similar  to  ' 
this,  can  scarcely  be  doubted.  Yet  the  impression  which 
the  sacred  literature  concerning  the  southern  kingdom 
makes  on  a  reader's  mind  justifies  us  in  believing  that  the 
people  of  almost  every  generation  had  some  knowledge  , 
of  the  law,  and  that  there  were  always  a  few  devout  souls  ' 
that  sought  to  obey  it. 


200  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

But  in  the  northern  kingdom  idolatry  prevailed  from 
first  to  last ;  and  so  great  was  its  influence  under  the  worst 
kings,  that  the  worshippers  of  Jehovah  were  obliged  to 
live  in  .concealment.  Yet,  in  the  darkest  hour,  when 
Jezebel  was  supreme,  there  were  "seven  thousand"  in 
Israel  who  had  not  bowed  the  knee  to  Baal.  But  as  they 
were  known  to  God,  and  not  to  Elijah,  we  must  conclude 
that  they  served  the  Lord  in  secret,  without  attempting 
to  let  their  light  shine  abroad,  and  perhaps  without  resting 
from  their  customary  labors  on  the  sabbath. 

Whether  the  sabbath  was  honored  by  any  considerable 
part  of  the  Jews  during  their  captivity  in  Babylon,  we 
have  been  unable  to  ascertain.  A  cloud  rests  upon  their 
history  in  this  respect,  and  we  do  not  learn  that  a  single 
ray  of  light  from  modern  discoveries  has  pierced  that 
cloud.  How  eagerly  would  any  of  us  welcome  satisfac- 
tory evidence  on  this  point !  And  it  is  possible  that  such 
evidence  may  yet  be  discovered  in  the  wonderful  ruins 
of  the  East. 

The  Jews  who  returned  from  Babylon  to  the  holy  city, 
by  permission  of  Cyrus,  were  doubtless,  for  the  most  part, 
men  who  cherished  a  very  high  regard  for  their  religion, 
as  well  as  for  their  fatherland.  Their  leaders  were  men 
zealous  for  the  law,  and  ready  to  encourage  a  strict  obedi- 
ence to  its  requisitions.  On  their  arrival  at  Jerusalem  an 
altar  for  burnt-offerings  was  set  up  at  once,  and  the  build- 
ing of  the  second  temple  was  presently  undertaken.  Re- 
ligion was  treated  as  a  chief  concern  of  the  people.  They 
were  instructed  as  to  the  law  of  their  fathers,  and  the  sab- 
bath was  strictly  observed  by  many. 

Yet  they  were  not  all  faithful.  Accustomed  to  inter- 
course with  the  heathen  in  Babylon,  and  encompassed  in 
their  recovered  city  by  idolaters,  they  found  it  no  easy 
task  to  walk  according  to  all  the  ordinances  of  the  law, 
blameless.     Some  of  them  had  taken  heathen  wives,  and 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  201 

had  yielded  in  many  things  to  their  seductive  influence.  It 
is  not  therefore  surprising  that  we  read  these  words  in  Ne- 
hemiah,  referring  to  the  state  of  rehgion  about  one  hundred 
years  after  the  first  company  returned  from  Babylon  :  *'  In 
those  days  I  saw  in  Judah  men  treading  wine-presses  on 
the  sabbath,  and  bringing  in  sheaves  and  lading  on  the 
asses,  even  both  wine,  grapes,  and  figs,  and  all  burdens, 
which  they  brought  into  Jerusalem  on  the  sabbath  day. 
And  men  of  Tyre  dwelt  therein,  bringing  fish  and  all 
kinds  of  wares,  and  selling  on  the  sabbath  to  the  sons  of 
Judah.  And  I  contended  with  the  nobles  of  Judah,  and 
said  unto  them.  What  is  this  evil  thing  that  ye  do,  even 
profaning  the  sabbath  day  ? "  To  put  an  end  to  such 
traffic,  Nehemiah  ordered  the  gates  of  Jerusalem  to  be  shut 
before  the  sabbath  began,  and  to  be  opened  only  after  it  was 
past.  At  this  the  merchants  and  sellers  of  all  kinds  of 
wares  lodged  without  Jerusalem  once  or  twice  ;  but,  when 
Nehemiah  threatened  to  lay  hands  on  them  if  they  should 
do  this  again,  they  gave  up  the  contest,  and  from  that 
time  forth  came  no  more  on  the  sabbath  (Neh.  xiii.  15  sq). 
From  this  narrative  we  do  not  infer  that  all  the  Jews  were 
ready  to  engage  in  labor  or  traffic  on  the  sabbath,  but 
rather  that  a  minority,  composed  of  irreligious  men,  would 
do  this  ;  and,  though  it  is  certain  that  such  a  minority  was 
always  present  among  the  people  from  the  days  of  Ezra  to 
the  time  of  Christ, —  a  period  of  five  hundred  years, — / 
the  few  references  to  the  sabbath  in  the  Apocrypha,  in 
Josephus,  and  in  Philo,  warrant  the  conclusion  that  the 
weekly  day  of  rest  was  strictly  observed  by  devout  Jews' 
through  this  half-millennium  of  their  history. 

In  support  of  this  statement,  we  appeal  to  their  conduct 
in  time  of  war,  to  the  Rabbinic  interpretation  of  their 
sabbath-rest,  and  to  the  mystical  reasons  for  rest  on  the 
seventh  day  presented  by  Philo. 

I.  Their  conduct  in  time  of  war.     According  to  Jose- 


202  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

phus,  Ptolemy,  the  son  of  Lagus,  who  was  one  of  the  five 
that  divided  between  themselves  the  empire  of  Alexander 
the  Great,  entered  Jerusalem  without  resistance,  partly 
because  the  Jews  were  unwilling  to  take  up  arms  on  the 
sabbath,  and  partly  because  they  were  not  sure  that  he 
was  an  enemy  to  them  ("Antiq."  xii.  i,  i).  Again,  when 
Antiochus  had  polluted  the  temple,  and  had  undertaken  to 
compel  all  the  Jews  to  worship  false  gods,  the  Asmonean 
heroes — Mattathias  and  his  sons  —  refused  to  forsake 
the  law  of  Moses,  and  repaired  to  mountain  fastnesses  for 
safety.  Others  of  kindred  spirit  followed  their  example, 
and  took  refuge  in  caves  of  the  wilderness.  These  were 
surrounded  and  attacked  upon  the  sabbath ;  and  as  they 
would  not  even  stop  up  the  entrance  to  their  caves,  \>x 
hurl  a  stone  at  their  assailants,  they  were  ruthlessly  slain 
to  the  number  of  a  thousand  people,  with  their  wives,  their 
children,  and  their  cattle.  Hearing  the  particulars  of  this 
slaughter,  Mattathias  and  his  friends  took  the  matter  into 
consideration,  and  decreed  that,  "■  Whoever  shall  come  to 
make  battle  with  us  on  the  sabbath  day,  we  will  fight 
against  him,  neither  will  we  all  die  as  our  brethren  that 
were  murdered  in  secret  places  "  (i  Mace.  ii.  19-41  ;  Jose- 
phus,  "  Antiq."  xii.  6,  i).  But  this  decree,  which  was  thence- 
forth accepted  as  compatible  with  the  law  by  most  of  the 
Jews,  did  not  authorize  them  to  repair  or  strengthen  their 
own  defences  on  the  sabbath,  nor  even  to  assail  an  enemy 
who  was  pushing  forward  his  works  on  that  day.  Hence 
Josephus  testifies  that  the  Romans  under  Pompey,  when 
besieging  the  temple,  would  not  have  been  able  to  fill  the 
chasm  north  of  it,  had  not  Pompey  observed  that  the  Jews 
abstained  from  all  sorts  of  work  (save  that  of  repelling  an 
assault)  on  the  seventh  days  ;  and,  restraining  his  soldiers 
from  fighting  on  those  days,  employed  them  in  filling  up 
the  chasm  and  raising  the  necessary  embankment  (Jose- 
phus, ''Wars  of  the  Jews,"  i.  7,  3  ;  ii.    16,  4).     Thus  the 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  203 

right  of  self-defence  against  an  actual  attack  was  made  of 
little  service  by  a  denial  of  the  right  to  oppose  prepara- 
tions for  attack.  Moreover,  a  passage  in  the  Life  of  Jose- 
phus  shows  that  some  of  the  Jews  believed  it  unlawful  to 
repulse  an  assaulting  foe  on  the  sabbath  (Life,  §  32). 

2.  The  Rabbinical  interpretation  of  the  Fourth  Com- 
mandment. This  appears  to  date  from  the  period  of  the 
second  temple.  It  was  current  and  respected  in  the  time 
of  Christ,  though  some  part  of  it  is  more  modern.  The 
Mishna,  which  gives  the  substance  of  this  interpretation, 
divides  the  work  which  must  be  avoided  on  the  sabbath 
into  thirty-nine  heads,  such  as  ''ploughing,  sowing,  reap- 
ing, binding  sheaves,  threshing,  winnowing,  sifting,  grind- 
ing, kneading,  baking,"  and  so  on  through  all  the  principal 
departments  of  useful  labor.  It  also  pronounces  every  kind 
of  work  that  can  be  classed  under  any  of  these  thirty-nine 
heads  unlawful.  Thus,  under  the  head  of  "  ploughing  " 
is  put  every  similar  work,  as  digging,  delving,  planting, 
watering,  weeding,  pruning,  and  the  like.  The  ramifica- 
tions of  prohibition  are  thus  almost  endless ;  and  a  great 
number  of  particulars  are  specified,  some  of  which  seem 
to  us  trivial,  if  not  absurd.  For  instance,  no  person  is 
allowed  to  carry  or  convey  any  thing  on  the  sabbath  from 
a  private  place,  say  an  ordinary  dwelling-house,  to  a  pub- 
lic place,  like  the  highway,  —  or  the  reverse.  But  this 
carrying  or  conveying  is  not  a  complete  or  perfect  action 
for  which  one  is  guilty,  unless  the  same  person  who  takes 
an  object  from  the  one  place  deposits  it  in  the  other. 
Suppose,  then,  that  a  beggar  stands  in  a  highway  just 
outside  a  private  house,  and  the  owner  stands  within.  If 
the  beggar  should  put  his  hand  through  a  door  or  window 
into  the  house,  and  put  something  into  the  owner's  hand, 
or  take  something  out  of  his  hand  into  the  street,  the 
beggar  would  be  guilty,  but  the  owner  of  the  house  free 
from  guilt.     On  the  other  hand,  should  the  owner  of  the 


204  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

house  reach  his  hand  out  of  the  same,  and  put  something 
into  the  beggar's  hand,  or  take  something  from  it,  and 
draw  his  hand  back,  the  owner  would  be  guilty,  and  the 
mendicant  free  from  guilt.  But,  should  the  beggar  put 
his  hand  in,  and  the  owner  take  something  from  it,  or 
put  something  into  it,  and  the  beggar  then  withdraw  it, 
both  are  free.  Or,  should  the  owner  reach  out  his  hand, 
and  the  mendicant  take  the  gift  from  it,  both  would  be 
free  from  guilt.  For,  in  neither  of  these  instances  does 
the  owner  of  the  house,  or  the  beggar,  perform  the  com- 
plete act  of  conveying  any  thing  from  one  kind  of  place 
to  another.  ("  Eighteen  Treatises  of  the  Mishna,"  trans- 
lated by  the  Rev.  D.  A.  De  Sola  and  the  Rev.  M.  J.  Raph- 
all,  xii.  ch.  i.)  Thus,  for  doing  half  a  piece  of  work  one 
is  innocent ;  for  doing  the  whole  of  it,  guilty ;  or,  in 
other  words,  divide  the  sin,  and  you  annihilate  it,  —  a 
new  illustration  of  the  motto,  "  Divide  and  conquer."  But 
the  fact  that  these  details  were  patiently  considered  and 
determined  by  some  of  the  most  eminent  sages  is  satisfac- 
tory evidence  of  two  things  :  viz.,  first,  of  the  profound 
respect  which  was  felt  for  the  law  of  Moses  concerning 
the  sabbath ;  and,  second,  of  the  extreme  difficulty  which 
there  is  in  laying  down  special  rules  as  to  what  may  or 
may  not  be  done  on  a  day  of  holy  rest.  Certain  it  is  that 
Jesus  Christ  refused  to  comply  with  some  of  the  regula- 
tions which  had  already  been  prescribed  by  Jewish  teach- 
ers, though  many  more  regulations  were  subsequently 
added.  For  instance,  it  was  lawful,  in  the  time  of  Christ, 
for  the  owner  of  an  ox  that  had  fallen  into  a  pit  to  lift  him 
out  of  the  same  on  the  sabbath ;  but,  according  to  the  or- 
thodox Judaism  of  later  times,  the  animal  cannot  be  taken 
out  unless  it  is  likely  to  perish  by  remaining  where  it  is 
until  the  morrow. 

3.  The  writings  of  Philo  afford  proof  of  the  high  esteem 
in  which  the  sabbath  was  held  by  Jews  out  of  Palestine  in 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  205 

the  first  century  of  our  era.  In  his  treatise  '*  On  the  Crea* 
tion  of  the  World"  (ch.  30),  he  says,  "After  the  whole 
world  had  been  completed  according  to  the  perfect  nature 
of  the  number  six,  the  Father  hallowed  the  day  following, 
the  seventh,  praising  it,  and  calling  it  holy.  For  that  day 
is  the  festival,  not  of  one  city  or  of  one  country,  but  of  all 
the  earth  ;  a  day  which  alone  it  is  right  to  call  the  day 
of  festival  for  all  people,  and  the  birthday  of  the  world." 
In  his  treatise  "  On  the  Life  of  Moses "  (ch.  xxvii.)  he 
remarks  that  ''  in  accordance  with  the  honor  due  to  the 
Creator  of  the  universe,  the  prophet  hallowed  the  sacred 
seventh  day,  beholding,  with  eyes  of  more  acute  sight  than 
those  of  mortals,  its  pre-eminent  beauty.  For  this  reason 
the  all-great  Moses  thought  fit  that  all  who  were  enrolled 
in  his  sacred  polity  should  follow  the  laws  of  nature,  and 
meet  in  a  solemn  assembly,  passing  the  time  in  joy  and 
cheerful  relaxation,  abstaining  from  all  works  and  from 
all  acts  that  tend  to  produce  any  thmg,  and  from  all  busi- 
ness connected  with  securing  the  means  of  living,  that 
they  should  keep  a  complete  truce,  avoiding  all  laborious 
thought  and  care,  and  devoting  their  leisure  to  .  .  .  the 
study  of  philosophy."  Again,  **  On  the  Ten  Command- 
ments "  (ch.  XX.),  he  says,  "  The  Fourth  Command  refers  to 
the  sacred  seventh  day,  that  it  may  be  passed  in  a  sacred 
and  holy  manner.  Now  some  states  keep  the  holy  festival 
only  once  in  the  month,  counting  from  the  new  moon,  as 
a  day  sacred  to  God  ;  but  the  Jews  keep  every  seventh 
day  regularly  after  each  interval  of  six  days.  .  .  .  For  the 
sacred  historian  says  that  the  world  was  created  in  six 
days,  and  that  on  the  seventh  day  God  desisted  from  his 
works,  and  began  to  contemplate  what  he  had  so  beauti- 
fully created  ;  therefore  he  also  commanded  the  beings 
who  were  destined  to  live  in  this  state  to  imitate  God  in 
this  particular,  .  .  .  applying  themselves  to  their  works 
for  six  days,  but  desisting  from  them,  and  philosophizing, 


206  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

on  the  seventh  clay."  Philo  now  proceeds  to  explain  what 
he  means  by  philosophizing,  thus:  ''They  devote  their 
leisure  to  contemplating  the  things  of  nature,  and  to  con- 
sidering whether  in  the  preceding  six  days  they  have  done 
any  thing  which  has  not  been  holy,  bringing  their  conduct 
before  tJie  judgment-seat  of  the  soil  I,  subjecting  it  to  a  scru- 
tiny, and  making  themselves  give  an  account  of  all  the 
things  which  they  have  said  or  done,  —  the  laws  sitting 
by  as  assessors  and  joint  inquirers ,  in  order  to  the  correct- 
ing of  such  errors  as  have  been  committed  through  care- 
lessness, and  to  the  guarding  against  any  similar  offences 
being  hereafter  repeated."  It  would  detain  you  too  long 
if  I  should  read  all  the  words  of  Philo  touching  the  sacred 
and  mystical  qualities  of  the  number  seven,  which  seem 
to  be  in  his  view  the  great  reason  why  God  hallowed  the 
seventh  day  by  resting  from  all  his  work.  A  single  para- 
graph must  suffice :  "■  The  number  seven  consists  of  one 
and  two  and  four,  numbers  which  have  two  most  harmoni- 
ous ratios,  the  twofold  and  the  fourfold  ratio ;  the  former 
of  which  effects  the  diapason  of  harmony,  while  the  four- 
fold ratio  causes  that  of  the  double  diapason.  It  also 
comprehends  other  divisions,  existing  in  some  yoke-like 
combination.  For  it  is  divided  first  of  all  into  the  num- 
bers one  and  six ;  then  into  the  two  and  five ;  and  last  of 
all  into  the  three  and  four.  And  the  proportion  of  these 
numbers  is  a  most  musical  one  ;  for  the  number  six  bears  to 
the  number  one  a  sixfold  ratio,  and  the  sixfold  ratio  causes 
the  greatest  possible  difference  between  existing  tones,  the 
distance  by  which  the  sharpest  tone  is  separated  from  the 
flattest.  .  .  .  Again,  the  ratio  of  four  to  two  displays 
the  greatest  power  in  harmony,  almost  equal  to  that  of 
the  diapason.  .  .  .  And  the  ratio  of  four  to  three  effects  the 
first  harmony,  that  in  the  thirds,  which  is  the  diatessa- 
ron."  By  such  and  still  more  mysterious  properties  in 
the  number  seven,  does  Philo  undertake  to  account  for  the 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  20/ 

rest  of  the  Creator  on  the  seventh  day.  How  puny  and 
childish  they  appear  beside  the  majestic  simphcity  of  his- 
torical truth  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  ! 

From  the  strict  and  almost  fanatical  regard  which  the 
Jews  paid  to  the  sabbath  in  time  of  war,  as  we  learn  it 
from  the  Apocrypha  and  Joseph  us  ;  from  the  minute  and 
complicated  rules  which  were  laid  down  by  the  Rabbis  to 
guide  the  people  in  their  sabbath  rest,  as  we  learn  them, 
from  the  Mishna  and  New  Testament ;  and  from  the  philo- 
sophical rhapsodies  of  Philo  on  the  sacred  number  seven, 
on  the  rest  of  God  after  creation  in  the  seventh  day,  and 
on  the  Fourth  Commandment,  requiring  the  Jews  to  hal- 
low that  day  by  abstaining  from  all  productive  or  fatiguing 
labor, — it  must  be  evident,  to  an  impartial  student  of 
history,  that  the  sabbath  was  scrupulously  observed  by 
pious  Israelites  in  the  time  of  Christ.  It  must  likewise 
be  evident  that  the  Saviour  did  not  condemn  sabbath-keep- 
ing in  itself,  but  only  the  Rabbinic  regulations  by  which 
it  was  made  unnatural  and  sometimes  cruel ;  regulations 
which  were  at  least  trivial,  and  the  observance  of  which 
may  be  fitly  compared  with  their  tithing  of  mint,  anise, 
and  cummin,  while  neglecting  the  weightier  matters  of  the 
law,  —  judgment,  mercy,  and  truth. 

Since  the  time  of  Christ  the  Jews  have  kept  the  sabbath 
in  about  the  same  spirit  and  manner,  speaking  generally, 
with  which  it  was  kept  by  their  ancestors  who  rejected 
our  Lord.  A  large  majority  of  the  race  have  honored  the 
instruction  of  the  Rabbis,  and  have  observed,  with  singular 
faithfulness,  the  specific  rules  prescribed  by  Rabbinic  wis- 
dom. Through  evil  report  and  good  report,  in  times  of 
persecution  and  in  times  of  peace,  they  have  clung  to  the 
traditions  of  their  fathers,  and  have  bowed  to  the  authority 
of  their  teachers.  ''Circumcision"  and  *'sabbatizing"  dis- 
tinguished them  from  Christians  in  the  time  of  Justin 
Martyr,  and  have  continued  to  do  the  same  from  that 
day  to  this. 


208  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

Yet  there  have  been  some  Jews  in  almost  every  age 
who  have  hesitated  about  receiving  the  Mishna  and  Tal- 
mud as  of  no  less  practical  authority  than  the  law  of 
Moses.  By  such  the  words  which  Longfellow  puts  into 
the  mouth  of  Gamaliel  would  not  be  accepted  as  true :  ^- 

"  Great  is  the  Written  Law ;  but  greater  still 
The  Unwritten,  the  Traditions  of  the  Elders, 
The  lovely  words  of  Levites,  spoken  first 
To  Moses  on  the  mount,  and  handed  down 
From  mouth  to  mouth,  in  one  unbroken  sound 
And  sequence  of  divine  authority. 
The  voice  of  God  resounding  through  the  ages. 

The  Writt,en  Law  is  water;  the  Unwritten 
Is  precious  wine ;  the  Written  Law  is  salt, 
The  Unwritten  costly  spice ;  the  Written  Law 
Is  but  the  body;  the  Unwritten,  the  soul 
That  quickens  it,  and  makes  it  breathe  and  live." 

This  language,  which  represents,  not  unfairly,  the  spirit 
of  extreme  Rabbinic  orthodoxy,  would  have  been  rejected 
by  a  considerable  fraction  of  the  Jews  in  almost  every 
century  since  the  advent  of  Christ.  Yet  the  sabbath  has 
been  held  in  honor  by  this  fraction  of  the  people,  as  well 
as  by  the  far  greater  numbers  that  have  received  the  Mish- 
na and  Gemara.  With  remarkable  unanimity  have  the 
many  sects  of  this  remarkable  race  persevered  in  calling 
the  sabbath  a  delight ;  and,  in  circumstances  fitted  to  shake 
the  constancy  of  any  but  the  firmest,  have  they  recognized 
their  obligation  to  abstain  from  labor  during  the  seventh 
day  of  the  week.  In  face  of  odds  the  most  hopeless,  and 
of  hatred  the  most  relentless,  and  of  persecution  the  most 
cruel,  they  have  testified  their  reverence  for  the  day  of 
rest.  Even  when  they  have  purchased  a  continuance  of 
life  by  submitting  to  baptism,  and  professing  to  be  Chris- 
tians, they  have,  in  many  instances,  retained  their  regard 
for  the  seventh  day. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  '2Q(^ 

Of  such  Jews,  in  the  time  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella, 
Milman  thus  speaks:  ''They  attended  the  services,  they 
followed  the  processions,  they  listened  to  the  teaching  of 
the  Church  ;  but  it  was  too  evident  that  their  hearts  were 
far  away,  joining  in  the  simpler  services  of  the  synagogue 
of  their  fathers  ;  and,  in  their  secret  chambers,  the  usages 
of  the  law  were  observed  with  the  fond  stealth  of  old 
attachment.  To  discover  how  widely  Jewish  practices  still 
prevailed,  nothing  was  necessary  but  to  ascend  a  hill  on 
their  sabbath,  and  look  down  on  the  town  or  village  below. 
Scarce  half  the  chimneys  would  be  seen  to  smoke :  all  that 
did  not  were  evidently  those  of  the  people  who  still  feared 
to  profane  the  holy  day  by  lighting  a  fire  "  (iii.,  308). 

We  may  perhaps  be  aided  in  our  attempt  to  appreciate 
the  steadfastness  of  the  Jews  in  keeping  their  holy  day, 
by  looking  at  a  few  particulars.  They  have  always  been 
a  thrifty  people,  eager  to  buy  and  sell  and  get  gain.  It 
v^as  therefore  an  act  of  no  little  self-denial  when  they 
rested  on  the  sabbath  in  countries  where  markets  were 
held  on  that  day.  Yet  they  did  this  in  France,  previous 
to  the  reign  of  Louis  the  Fair,  and  probably  in  many  other 
parts  of  Europe  (Milman,  iii.,  146).  In  estimating  the  \ 
significance  of  their  conduct  in  this  respect,  we  must  bear 
in  mind  three  facts  :  first,  that  trade  was  their  business, 
their  livelihood,  their  passion  ;  second,  that  the  people  then 
did  most  of  their  trading  on  market-days,  coming  into  the 
towns  and  cities  from  the  country  round  about,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  disposing  of  their  produce,  and  purchasing  what, 
they  needed  ;  and,  third,  that  Christians  would  not  engage 
in  traffic  on  the  first  day  of  the  week,  and  that  Jews  were 
rarely  permitted  to  do  so.  It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that 
reverence  for  the  sabbath  led  this  people,  during  long  cen- 
turies of  oppression,  to  conquer  the  strongest  impulse  of 
selfishness.  In  many  instances,  however,  this  was  not 
their  severest  trial.     Thus,  according  to  Graetz'  History 


2 1 0  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

of  the  Jews  (iv.,  p.  392),  they  were  sometimes  required 
by  generals  to  provide  fresh  bread  for  the  hungry  legions 
every  sabbath  day ;  and  this  could  not  be  done  by  them 
without  breaking  their  holy  rest  by  the  kindling  of  fires 
and  much  other  labor.  Yet  the  requisition  must  be  met, 
or  pillage  and  death  would  ensue.  We  are  therefore  glad 
to  learn  from  the  Jewish  historian  that  the  anxious  Rabbis 
found  means  to  relax  the  strictness  of  their  interpretation 
of  the  law,  instead  of  demanding  punctual  obedience  in 
the  face  of  certain  ruin. 

It  would  require  more  time  than  is  allotted  to  this  ad- 
dress, to  describe  the  various  methods  which  have  been 
employed  by  the  foes  of  Judaism  to  render  the  worship  of 
the  synagogue  on  Saturday  a  source  of  peril  and  of  loss ; 
but  it  may  properly  be  remarked  that  the  bitterness  of 
Christians  towards  Israelites  has  not  been  chiefly  due  to 
the  fact  that  the  latter  have  kept  their  ancient  sabbath,  but 
rather  to  such  facts  as  these  :  that  they  have  crucified  and 
blasphemed  the  Christ  of  God  ;  have  treated  the  day  of 
his  resurrection  and  glory  with  contempt ;  have  separated 
themselves  in  domestic  life  and  sympathy  from  all  men  of 
alien  faith ;  have  been  usurers,  greedy  of  gain,  in  every 
nation  and  age ;  and  have  been  suspected  at  times,  though 
without  sufificient  reason,  of  being  "haters  of  mankind," 
and  guilty  of  horrible  crimes.  Hence  they  have  often 
been  assailed  by  means  of  their  sabbath-keeping,  though 
not  on  account  of  it.  Yet  it  would,  no  doubt,  be  going  too 
far,  if  we  should  say  that  their  observance  of  the  seventh 
day  of  the  week  instead  of  the  first  has  not  been  a  serious 
annoyance  to  the  Christian  world,  and  that  it  has  not  led, 
with  other  things,  in  rougher  times  than  ours,  to  unjust 
treatment  of  them.  Nay,  we  are  constrained  to  admit, 
that,  in  some  parts  of  our  own  land  to-day,  the  statutes 
forbidding  labor  and  trade  on  the  Lord's  Day  are  scarce- 
ly  just   to   Israelites  and  others  who  believe  themselves 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  211 

under  religious  obligation  to  make  the  sabbath  a  day  of 
rest. 

Having  spoken  of  the  sabbath  in  Jewish  history,  as  if  it 
had  been  carefully  observed  by  all  the  Israelites,  it  is  per- 
haps necessary  for  me  to  state  that  there  have  always 
been  exceptions  to  this  general  fidelity.  Not  all  the  Jews 
have  been  religious  according  to  their  own  standard  of 
religion.  Thus  we  are  informed,  that,  in  the  fourth  cen- 
tury, Saturday  was  the  day  for  theatrical  entertainments 
in  Alexandria,  and  that  Jews  flocked  to  these  entertain- 
ments which  were  also  frequented  by  Gentiles  ;  and  this, 
I  am  confident,  was  incompatible  with  a  strict  observance 
of  the  sabbath.  In  modern  times,  if  we  are  not  misin- 
formed, Jews  have  often  been  associated  in  business  with 
Christians,  so  that,  while  they  rested  themselves  on  their 
sabbath,  the  work  of  the  firm  went  on,  and  the  profits  of 
trade  came  into  their  possession.  If,  then,  they  were  able 
to  contribute  something  to  the  firm  by  their  toil  on  the 
Lord's  Day,  and  perhaps  by  traflic  in  a  quiet  way  with 
their  brethren,  and  with  others  who  had  no  religious  con- 
victions—  why,  so  much  the  better  for  the  firm!  But  it 
may  be  questioned  whether  Jews  or  Christians  who  are 
in  earnest  about  their  religion  would  be  wholly  satisfied 
with  such  an  arrangement.  Furthermore,  it  is  said  that 
many  "  reformed  Jews  "  of  our  own  day  do  not  hesitate 
to  continue  their  business  on  Saturday,  especially  since 
that  is  the  best  day  in  the  week  for  trade. 

Yet,  after  making  all  necessary  qualifications,  it  remains 
a  fact  that  the  Israelites  have  exhibited  through  eighteen 
centuries  a  most  remarkable  and  praiseworthy  regard  for 
the  sabbath  of  their  fathers.  We  can  only  commend  them 
for  doing  this  as  long  as  they  remain  Jews  in  religion, 
believing  in  Moses  but  not  in  Christ.  But  we  must  deep- 
ly regret  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  still  to  them  a  root  out 
of  dry  ground,  without  form  or  comeliness. 


2 1 2  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

Our  sketch  of  the  sabbath  in  Jewish  history  leads  us  to 
the  following  reflections :  First,  that  rest  from  secular 
work  during  one  day  in  seven  is  conducive  to  health  and 
thrift.  For  nothing  in  the  history  of  the  Jews  is  more 
noteworthy  than  their  mental  and  bodily  vigor,  and  their 
success  in  acquiring  wealth.  And,  though  the  former  as 
well  as  the  latter  may  have  been  due  in  part  to  the  vital 
force  of  the  original  stock,  we  must  ascribe  them  in  a  still 
larger  measure  to  the  blessed  influence  of  their  weekly 
rest.  The  opportunities  of  gain  which  they  have  missed 
by  keeping  the  sabbath  have  been  more  than  balanced  by 
the  health  and  endurance  which  it  has  criven  them  for 
the  other  days  of  the  week.  And  so  their  history,  apart 
from  the  question  of  religious  duty,  is  a  strong  argument 
for  making  one  day  in  seven  a  period  of  rest  from  ordinary 
work.  But,  whether  the  full  benefit  of  such  a  weekly  rest 
can  ever  be  secured  without  religion,  is  another  question. 
Certainly  we  have  no  satisfactory  evidence  that  a  weekly 
holiday  for  idleness  and  dissipation  would  bring  the  re- 
pose and  blessing  of  the  sabbath.  We  remark,  secondly, 
that  the  conscience  of  Jews  in  keeping  their  sabbath 
ought  to  be  regarded  by  the  State  as  no  less  sacred  than 
the  conscience  of  Christians  in  keeping  the  Lord's  Day. 
If  Christians  are  more  numerous  than  Jews  in  any  nation, 
it  is  manifestly  proper  for  "the  powers  that  be"  to  make 
the  first  day  of  the  week  the  legal  day  of  rest,  for  the 
physical,  the  mental,  and  the  moral  good  of  the  people  ; 
but  the  Jews  should  be  suffered  to  engage  on  that  day  in 
any  kind  of  lawful  work  which  does  not  disturb  the  wor- 
ship of  Christians.  For  the  State  should  treat  all  peace- 
able citizens  as  nearly  alike  as  is  practicable ;  and  there- 
fore it  should  not  compel  those  who  think  themselves  under 
religious  obligation  to  keep  the  seventh  day  of  the  week, 
to  keep  the  first  also.  History  proves  that  no  degree  of 
legal  restraint  will  prevent  persons  who  are  Jews  in  faith 


THE   SABBA  TH  IN  HIS  TOR  V.  2 1 3 

from  keeping  their  sabbath,  and  that  no  decree  of  civil 
constraint  will  force  them  to  keep  the  Lord's  Day  while 
they  disbelieve  in  Christ  Jesus,  who  on  that  day  entered 
Jerusalem  in  triumph,  and  on  that  day  rose  from  the 
dead. 


214  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS, 


THE   CHANGE   OF   THE   SABBATH  TO   THE   LORD'S 

DAY. 

BY    REV.    PROFESSOR   EGBERT    C.   SMYTH,   D.D.,    OF   ANDOVER. 

Everywhere  in  Christendom  the  first  day  of  the  week 
is  recognized  as  a  day  of  special  religious  observance. 
Various  opinions  exist  respecting  the  grounds  and  the 
extent  of  the  obligation  thus  to  set  it  apart  from  the  other 
days  of  the  week.  But  its  recognition  is  practically  uni- 
versal. And  wherever  it  is  observed,  the  obligation  to 
keep  the  seventh  day  as  a  Sabbath  of  the  Lord  is  regarded 
as  terminated. 

The  question  upon  which  I  have  been  requested  to 
speak,  viz.  :  "  The  Change  of  the  Sabbath  to  the  Lord's 
Day,"  is  best  approached,  I  think,  by  noticing  this  broad 
and  patent  fact,  that  Christianity  has,  in  some  way,  brought 
about  such  a  substitution  of  days,  and  by  inquiring,  first 
of  all :  How  has  this  change  been  accomplished  }  As  the 
change  is  itself  a  fact  of  history,  and  also  is  not,  like  other 
facts  which  lie  at  the  foundation  of  the  Christian  religion, 
announced  and  explained  directly  and  authoritatively  by 
the  writers  of  the  New  Testament,  it  is  specially  incum- 
bent that  our  investigation  should  be,  in  the  first  instance 
at  least,  rigidly  and  impartially  historical,  rather  than  dog- 
matic. 

Our  Lord,  during  the  period  of  His  earthly  ministry, 
carefully  conformed  to  the  requirements  of  the  Mosaic 
institute.  No  fault  could  be  found  with  Him  in  any  of 
His  relations  to  the  Jewish  law.  He  fulfilled  all  righteous- 
ness. He  led  His  disciples  in  the  same  path.  His  teach- 
ling,  indeed,  spiritualized  the  commandments  of  the  law. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  215 

He  claimed  to  be  the  Lord  of  the  Sabbath.  He  plainly 
pointed  to  vast  religious  changes  which  were  to  come. 
He  finally  commissioned  His  disciples  to  proclaim  a  uni- 
versal religion.  Yet,  salvation  is  of  the  yews.  The  Apos- 
tles were  to  tarry  in  Jerusalem  until  endued  with  power 
from  on  high.  Not  during  Jesus'  lifetime  on  earth,  — not 
even  in  the  interval  between  His  resurrection  and  ascen- 
sion, —  did  He  ever,  so  far  as  appears,  formally  release  His 
disciples  from  their  special  obligations  as  Jews. 

It  need  not  surprise  us,  therefore,  that  the  Apostles 
themselves  were  somewhat  slow  in  discovering  the  change 
which  in  principle  and  potency  had  been  fully  brought 
about  by  the  crucifixion,  resurrection,  and  ascension  of 
their  Lord.  They  were  Jews.  They  followed  their  great 
Teacher's  example  in  frequenting  the  temple,  in  observing 
its  ritual,  in  keeping  the  national  feasts,  in  hallowing  the 
Sabbath.  Soon,  we  may  believe, — just  how  soon  we  can- 
not tell,  — the  Apostles,  at  least,  were  made  aware  that 
their  special  mission  to  their  own  countrymen  was  ended. 
There  is  a  tradition  which  possibly  may  have  some  foun- 
dation in  truth,  that  after  twelve  years  they  went  forth  into 
the  world. ^  Yet  it  seems  reasonable  to  believe  that  the 
Church  of  Jerusalem,  down  to  the  destruction  of  the  Tem- 
ple, and  perhaps  even  later,  continued  to  observe  the  Jew- 
ish law,  including  the  hallowing  of  the  Jewish  Sabbath. 
With  the  leaders  of  the  Church,  at  least,  — probably  with 
the  majority  of  its  members,  —  this  observance  was  increas- 
ingly a  matter  of  expediency.  It  rested  on  the  principle 
which  Paul  declared :  "  To  the  Jews  I  became  as  a  Jew, 
that  I  might  gain  the  Jews."  ^  The  hope  was  entertained 
of  a  collective  conversion  of  their  countrymen,  and  perhaps 
of  a  retention  by  the  Jewish  nation  of  its  place  of  privilege 
and  honor  in  God's  covenant.  So  long  as  this  result  seemed 
possible,  it  was  desirable  to  avoid  every  thing  which  would 

1  Clem.  Alex.,  Stromata,  vi.  5.  2  i  Cor.  ix.  20. 


2l6  SABBATH  ESSAYS, 

excite  prejudice  and  needless  hostility.  There  was  of 
course  danger  in  such  a  line  of  conduct,  —  the  exposure  to 
an  identification  of  Christianity  with  Judaism,  and  even  to 
apostacy  from  Christ.  But  it  was  not  in  principle  and 
motive  such  an  identification.  For  again  and  again  the 
Church  of  Jerusalem  recognized  the  liberty  of  the  Gospel, 
and  the  Christian  standing  of  Gentile  converts  who  ob- 
served none  of  the  ceremonies  required  in  the  law.  The 
course  pursued,  therefore,  was,  as  I  have  said,  a  natural 
and  expedient  one  until,  in  the  Providence  of  God,  the 
success  or  non-success  of  the  mission  to  the  Jews  should 
be  decisively  settled. 

While  this  state  of  things  continued,  it  is  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  the  Sabbath —  the  hallowed  rest  of  the  seventh 
day  —  was  scrupulously  observed  at  Jerusalem,  and  by  all 
the  Jewish  Christian  churches.  That  there  was  also  some 
commemoration  of  the  day  on  which  Jesus  rose  from  the 
dead,  seems  not  improbable.  But  there  is  no  evidence 
of  the  fact,  and,  whatever  may  have  been  the  custom,  it 
can  scarcely  have  assumed  either  such  significance  or  pro- 
portion as  belongs  to  the  observance  of  a  Sabbath. 

It  is  one  of  the  many  signs  of  the  genuineness  and 
thorough  trustworthiness  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles, 
that  the  first  indication,  with  a  single  exception,  of  a  spe- 
cial remembrance  of  the  first  day  of  the  week  appears 
incidentally,  in  connection  with  a  distant  Pauline  church 
in  Asia  Minor,  and  about  the  year  57  of  our  era.  Paul 
was  returning  for  the  last  time  to  Jerusalem.  Sailing 
from  Philippi  to  Troas  he  had  an  unexpectedly  long  pass- 
age, and  arrived  after  the  first  day  of  the  week  was  past. 
He  tarried  seven  days,  — apparently,  in  part  at  least,  that 
he  might  be  with  the  church  on  "the  first  day  of  the 
week,  when  the  disciples  came  together  to  break  bread," 
the  bread  of  holy  communion.  The  natural  implication  is, 
that  the  ^rst  day  of  the  week  was,  in  Troas,  a  season  set 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  217 

apart  for  the  celebration  of  the  Lord's  Sup^Der,  the  most 
distinctive  rite  of  Christianity.  Such  a  day  would  inevi- 
tably, for  this  reason,  if  for  no  other,  receive  the  appella- 
tion of  the  Lord's  Day.  Yet,  in  the  narrative,  this  term 
does  not  occur.  The  day  is  simply  called  :  tJie  first  day 
of  the  zveek. 

A  little  earlier  —  perhaps  a  year  before  —  Paul  writes 
to  another  of  the  churches  under  his  care,  the  Corinthian, 
and  directs  that  on  the  first  day  of  the  week  every  one 
should  set  aside  a  contribution  to  be  ready  upon  the  Apos- 
tles' arrival. 1  Similar  instructions,  it  is  also  stated,  had 
been  given  to  the  churches  of  Galatia.  It  is  thus  evident 
that  already  the  first  day  of  the  week  was  of  wide-spread 
distinction  as  a  day  of  special  religious  service.^ 

Less  than  a  decade  after  this  direction  was  given,  the 
writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  exhorts  a  community 
of  Jewish  Christians  to  attendance  on  distinctively  Chris- 
tian gatherings.^  It  is  natural  to  suppose  that  such  Chris- 
tian assemblies  were  held  on  a  distinctive  day. 

If,  as  many  scholars  now  suppose,  the  Apocalypse  of 
John  was  written  about  the  same  time  with  this  exhorta- 
tion (A.  D.  6%  or  69),  it  is  all  the  more  noticeable  that, 
in  a  book  so  conformed  in  diction  and  symbol  to  yewish 
conceptions,*  occurs  the  phrase,  tJie  Lord' s  day.  Its  ap- 
pearance in  such  a  relation  intimates  that  one  of  the 
apostles,  who  had  been  a  pillar  in  the  Jewish  branch  of 
the  Christian  Church,  recognized  the  first  day  of  the  week 

1  I  Cor.  xvi.  2. 

2  If  we  interpret  the  command  to  mean  that  the  offerings  were  to  be  set  apart  by 
each  one  in  his  own  home,  and  so  the  whole  sum  of  his  gifts  be  available  for  the  Apos- 
tle on  his  coming,  the  first  day  of  the  week  must  have  been  of  some  peculiar  signifi- 
cance to  these  Christians  to  be  thus  designated.  If  —  as  seems  most  congruous  with 
the  Apostle's  design  iji  giving  the  direction  —  we  suppose  that  the  gifts  were  put  into 
a  common  fund  each  first  day  of  the  week,  we  have  an  additional  trace  of  Christian 
assemblies  for  worship  on  such  a  day.  Cf.  Bishop  Ellicott's  A''.  T.  Com.  for  Eng- 
lish Readers^  vol.  ii.,  p.  353. 

8  Heb.  X.  25. 

4  Cf.  Bishop  Lightfoot's  Com.  on  Galatians,  p.  343. 


2 1 8  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

as  belonging  peculiarly  to  the  Lord,  and  that  he  was 
familiar  with  a  Christian  custom  of  thus  observing  it. 
For  a  name  could  not  thus  incidentally,  and  without  ex- 
planation, be  used  of  one  day  in  the  seven  unless  the 
habits  of  Christians  at  the  time  —  Jewish  as  well  as  Gen- 
tile—  interpreted  the  name;  unless,  in  a  word,  the  special 
religious  observance  of  the  day  was  already  an  established 
fact. 

And  in  this  connection  it  is  worthy  of  notice  with  what 
particularity  the  Apostle  John,  in  his  Gospel  (which,  how- 
ever, was  not  written  until  toward  the  close  of  the  cen- 
tury), marks  the  appearance  of  Jesus  to  His  disciples  not 
only  on  the  day  of  His  Resurrection,  but  also  ''after  eight 
days,"  ^  —  that  is,  on  the  first  day  of  the  week;  and  how 
carefully  the  Apostle  also  records  that  ''on  the  same  day," 
or  "that  day," — i.e.,  the  day  when  He  rose,  —  "being 
the  first  of  the  week,"  ^  Jesus  breathed  on  His  disciples, 
and  said  to  them  :  Receive  ye  tJie  Holy  Ghost.  Whose 
soever  sins  ye  remit,' they  are  remitted  tmto  them,  and 
whose  soever  sins  ye  retaijt,  they  are  retained. 

It  is  thus  evident  from  the  facts  which  have  been  ad- 
duced :  — 

First.  That  in  Christian  Churches  superintended  by 
the  Apostles  of  our  Lord  —  particularly  the  Apostles  Paul 
and  John  —  the  custom  sprang  up,  with  their  approval,  of 
setting  apart  the  first  day  of  the  week  for  special  religious 
observances. 

Second.  That  this  day  received  a  specific  name,  charac- 
terizing it  as  peculiarly  connected  with  the  remembrance 
of  Christ,  the  Lord. 

Third.  That  it  commemorated  the  event  by  which  was 
attested  the  Redeemer's  victory  for  mankind  over  sin  and 
death.  His  resurrection  from  the  tomb  ;  and  that  it  was 
also  associated  with  the  Gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Inspi- 

1  xxi.  26.  2  XX.  19. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  219 

ration  and  Commission  of  the  Apostles,  and  thus  with  the 
Founding  of  the  Christian  Church. ^ 

These  results  are  amply  confirmed  by  testimonies  which 
exhibit  the  practice  of  the  Church  in  the  period  immedi- 
ately subsequent  to  the  Apostolic  Age.  I  will  not  cite 
them,  for  they  have  been  often  adduced,  and  are  easily 
accessible.  They  show  the  continued  existence  of  the 
Lord's  Day  as  a  day  commemorative  of  the  Resurrection, 
and  also  that  it  was  used  for  special  religious  services.^ 
An  acceptance  of  the  day  so  universal,  uninterrupted  and 
undisputed,  implies,  it  may  be  fairly  argued,  that  it  was 
received  as  a  part  of  Apostolic  Christianity. 

On  this  basis  the  day  had,  for  a  time,  a  natural  and 
legitimate  development.  It  grew  into  the  proportions  of 
a  Christian  Sabbath,  a  Sabbath  fulfilling  the  spiritual  in- 
tent of  the  ancient  day  of  rest  as  interpreted  by  the 
prophets,  and  by  our  Lord.  This  quiet  growth  of  the  day 
in  its  extension  with  the  Christian  Church,  and  in  its  ap- 
propriation of  time  from  secular  pursuits  and  cares,  is  a 
striking  feature  of  the  history.  It  is  more  noticeable,  be- 
cause, as  we  shall  see,  the  Early  Church  sharply  and  deci- 
sively discriminated  the  Lord's  Day  from  the  Jewish  Sab- 
bath. The  assimilation  of  the  two  days  was  through  an 
inward  spiritual  law,  and  in  view  of  religious  necessities 
which  demanded  satisfaction.^     When,  at  a  later  stage  of 

1  The  question  whether  the  Pentecost  of  Acts  ii.  i  fell  on  Saturday  or  Sunday,  is 
still  an  open  one,  though  the  probability  is  in  favor  of  the  former.  Some  recent  writ- 
ers (Drs.  William  Smith,  Lechler,  Plumptre)  recognize  the  15th  of  Nisan  as  the  date 
of  the  Crucifixion,  yet,  with  Mr.  Lewin  {Fasti  Sacri,  p.  xli.),  claim  that  the  follow- 
ing Pentecost  occurred  on  the  first  day  of  the  week.  But  the  fifty  days  are  better  reck- 
oned from,  and  inclusive  of,  the  i6th  of  Nisan,  so  that  Pentecost  falls  on  the  same  day 
of  the  week  with  it.  This,  according  to  Oehler  {Theol.  d.  Alt.  Test.,  p.  552),  is  the 
Jewish  practice.  In  any  event,  however,  the  Early  Church  made  no  mistake  in  closely 
connecting  the  festival  of  Pentecost  (Whitsuntide)  with  that  of  the  Resurrection.  Cf. 
Neander,  History  of  the  Christian  Religion  and  Church,  i.,  p.  300,  sq. 

2  I  do  not  recall  in  the  earliest  writers  any  allusion  to  its  connection  with  the 
Descent  of  the  Spirit. 

3  See  Origen,  Cant.  Cels.^  viii.,  23. 


220  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

the  history,  there  began  to  be  an  outward  conformity, 
maintained  by  an  appeal  to  ancient  commandments,  as 
though  these  were  still  in  force,  the  Church  itself  was  far 
on  the  road  to  the  legalism  of  the  Mediaeval  era.  But  the 
first  process  to  which  I  have  referred,  though  not  wholly 
pure,  was  in  the  main  a  spiritual  one,  and  the  fact  of  such 
a  development  has  not,  perhaps,  received  the  attention  it 
merits. 

The  first  observance  of  the  Day  is  associated  with  the 
celebration  of  the  Lord's  Supper  and  of  the  Agape.  The 
time  of  holding  these  services  appears  to  have  been 
the  evening.!  From  Pliny's  letter  to  Trajan  (c.  A.  D.  in, 
possibly  a  little  earlier),  we  learn  that  services  were  then 
held  "  on  a  stated  day  before  light,"  and  that  after  separat- 
ing it  was  the  custom  to  re-assemble  for  a  common  and 
harmless  meal.  The  indications  are  that  the  Lord's 
Supper  was  now  observed  in  the  early  morning,  and  the 
Agape  afterwards,  probably  still  in  the  evening.^  A  gen- 
eration later  Justin  Martyr  gives  us  a  somewhat  detailed 
account  of  the  weekly  worship  of  the  Christians.^  The 
hour  is  not  specified,  but  it  is  most  natural  to  assume 
some  time  in  the  course  of  the  day.  The  service  was  a 
protracted  one.  And  though  there  was.  probably  then  no 
uniformity  in  this  matter,  and  all  arrangements  were 
increasingly  liable  to  disturbance  from  the  growing  hostil- 
ity of  the  Empire,  it  is  involved  in  the  general  progress  of 
Christianity  that  the  common  worship  would  become  more 
and  more  a  matter  of  formal  arrangement.  Passing  on  to 
the  next  century,  we  find  the  services  yet  more  elabo- 
rate and  sufficiently  protracted  to  occupy  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  early  morning  hours.*     And  just  upon  the 

1  I  Cor.  xi.  20  ;  Acts  xx.  7.  Cf.  the  Alexandrian  custom  noticed  in  Diet,  of  ChriS' 
iian  Antig.,  i.,  p.  41. 

2  Cf.  Dr.  Plumptre's  comment  on  Acts  xx.  7,  in  Bishop  Ellicott's  Com. 

3  Apol.  i.  67  (Ante-Nicene  Christian  Library,  ii.  65). 

4  See  for  details  the  very  graphic  and  full  description  given  by  Dr.  Pressens6: 
Chr,  Life  and  Practice  in  the  Early  Church,  p.  324,  sq. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  221 

threshold  of  the  century  we  hear  Tertullian's  exhortation  : 
"But  we,  as  we  have  received,  ought,  on  the  day  of  the 
Lord's  Resurrection  alone,  to  beware  not  only  of  that,ibut 
also  of  every  habit  and  office  of  anxiety,  postponing  even 
our  business  lest  we  give  any  place  to  the  Devil."  ^  xhe 
religious  commemoration  of  the  day  of  the  Resurrection 
was  thus  drawing  in  its  train,  as  a  necessary  consequence, 
abstinence  from  all  that  would  interfere  with  such  observ- 
ance. A  century  later,  and  Eusebius,  in  an  Exposition  of 
the  Ninety-first  Psalm,^  uses  language  which  might  seem  at 
first  to  imply  his  belief  in  a  complete  transference,  by 
Divine  authority,  of  the  observance  of  the  ancient  Sabbath 
to  the  Lord's  Day,  but  which,  upon  closer  examination, 
shows  only  how  naturally  and  readily  a  Christian  use  of 
the  latter  takes  on  a  Sabbatic  form.  In  this  same  century, 
also,  the  first  ardor  and  purity  of  Christian  love  having 
subsided,  and  the  ''Peace  of  the  Church"  through  Con- 
stantine  and  his  successors  having  brought  a  great  mass 
of  formal  worshippers  into  its  membership,  ecclesiastical 
councils  found  it  necessary  to  prescribe  disciplinary  rules 
for  absentees  from  Christian  worship  and  from  the  Lord's 
table,  and  finally  this  canon  appears  :  "  Christians  should 
not  Judaize,  and  rest  on  the  Sabbath,  but  should  labor  on 
that  day.  But,  preferring  in  honor  the  Lord's  Day,  they 
should  rest  as  Christians,  if,  indeed,  they  are  able  (so  to 
do).  But  if  they  should  be  found  to  be  Judaists,  let  them 
be  anathema  from  Christ."^  So  near  to  the  ancient 
Sabbath  even  in  outward  form  did  the  desire  to  secure  a 
religious  remembrance  of  a  risen  Redeemer  and  of  His 
passion,  bring  the  observance  of  the  Lord's  Day,  at  a  time 
when  it  was  still  necessary  to  guard  against  a  confusion  of 
Christianity  and  Judaism.     And  Hilary  but  expresses  the 

1  i.e.,  praying  kneeling  instead  of  standing. 

2  De  Orat.,  xxiii.  (A.-N.  Lib.,  xi.,  p.  199). 

8  xcii.  of  our  version.  ^  c.  29. 


222  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

natural  result  of  a  process  not  yet  robbed  of  its  inward 
spiritual  motive,  when  he  says  —  speaking  of  keeping  the 
Lord's  Day  — that  on  it  Christians  "enjoy  the  felicity  of 
a  perfect  Sabbath."  ^ 

We  are  now  prepared  to  deal  more  directly  with  the 
question  I  have  proposed,  viz.  :  How  was  the  change  from 
the  ancient  Sabbath  to  the  new  brought  about } 

It  is  the  opinion  of  some  persons  that  the  change  pre- 
supposes a  sense  perpetuated  in   the  Church  of  a  contin- 
ued obligation  of  the  Fourth  Commandment.     Some  have 
i maintained  that  the  literal  interpretation  of  this  command 
I  requires  simply  a  hallowing  of  one  day  in  seven,  leaving 
/  the   particular  day  to  be   otherwise  determined.     Others 
I  have  admitted  that  the  specific  requirement  of  the  seventh 
day  contained  in  the  law  was  authoritatively  repealed,  but 
I  claim  that  the  observance  of  one  day  in  seven  was  still 
j    prescribed.     In  addition,  it  is  supposed  that  the  specific 
\   day  which  fulfils  this  obligation  was  for  this    purpose  au- 
\  thoritatively  appointed  by  our  Lord  through  His  Apostles. 
1       Such  an  interpretation  of  the  change  I  deem  untenable 
in  view  of  the  facts  of  the  history.     And  since  an  errone- 
ous theory  of  the  change  is  prejudicial  to  the  cause  we 
are  assembled  to  promote,  I  may  be  pardoned  for  stating 
somewhat  fully  the  reasons  for  believing  that  the  Lord's 
Day  began  its  history  and  became  established  in  the  Chris- 
tian Church  with  less  dependence  upon  the  ancient  Sab- 
bath than  is  sometimes  supposed. 
r      (I.)  A  legal  transfer  of  the  requirements  of  the  Fourth 
/    Commandment  from  the  seventh  day  of  the  week  to  the 
\    first  could  only  have  taken  place  by  divine  enactment, 
\  duly  communicated  by  competent  authority.     There  is  no 
\  evidence   that   such   an    enactment   was    made   and   pro- 
mulgated. 

The  will  of  God  can  be  made  known  in  other  ways  than 

1  Prol.  in  Psal. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  22$ 

by  statutes  and  ordinances  ;  but  we  cannot  claim  that  it  is 
revealed  in  the  form  of  a  command,  or  as  a  formal  part  of 
a  commandment,  without  a  divine  authorization  to  this 
precise  effect. 

The  Fourth  Commandment  requires  the  consecration 
of  one  particular  and  specified  day  to  religious  uses.  It 
defines  this  day  to  be  the  seventh.  It  prohibits  on  this 
special  day  the  work  of  life  which  is  appointed  for  the 
other  days  of  the  week.  If  another  day  was  substituted 
for  the  seventh,  and  made  binding  on  the  conscience  as 
the  requirement  of  this  commandment,  in  the  same  way 
that  previously  the  seventh  day  had  been  on  the  conscience  : 
of  the  Jew,  the  change  could  only  have  been  effected  by  \ 
the  same  authority  which  enacted  the  original  law.  And, 
if  made,  it  must  have  been  duly  authenticated  to  all  whom 
it  bound.  But  in  respect  to  such  a  transfer  and  publi- 
cation the  New  Testament  is  utterly  silent.  The  Apos- 
tles give  directions  as  to  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper, 
as  to  the  duties  of  parents,  and  children,  and  masters,  and 
servants,  and  slaves.  They  re-afifirm,  at  least  in  principle, 
all  of  the  other  commandments  of  the  Decalosfue.  But 
there  is  no  injunction  to  keep  the  first  day  of  the  week  as 
a  Sabbath.  The  fact,  when  rtghtly  understood,  is  per- 
fectly consistent,  as  I  hope  to  indicate,  with  the  continued 
religious  observance  of  one  day  in  seven,  and  with  its 
maintenance  as  of  Christian  obligation,  but  we  cannot 
claim  for  the  first  day  of  the  week  any  positive  prescription 
to  this  effect,  nor  directly  appropriate  to  it  the  law  given 
on  Mount  Sinai.  For  that  law  does  not  require  the  ob- 
servance of  the  first  day  of  the  week,  but  that  of  the  sev- 
enth. Nor  is  this  a  mere  accident  of  the  command,  but  a 
part  of  its  substance,  and  is  founded  in  the  reason  which 
is  given  in  the  book  of  Exodus  for  its  institution.  Nor 
has  any  one  but  the  Giver  of  the  law  any  right  to  alter  it. 
Nor  can  any  modification  of  it  become  legally  binding,  — 


224  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

that  is,  obligatory  as  an  explicit  ordinance,  and  as  a  part 
of  this  command,  — which  has  not  been  enjoined  as  such 
by  Him. 

A  recent  writer  ^  has  recalled  a  mediaeval  legend  which 
discloses  men's  consciousness  of  the  need  of  such  a  sanc- 
tion, if  the  law  of  the  Christian  Sabbath  is  to  be  literally 
the  Fourth  Commandment,  with  merely  a  change  of  day. 
Somewhere  about  the  eighth  century,  probably,  a  letter 
appeared  which  purported  to  have  been  written  by  Christ 
in  Heaven,  and  dropped  so  that  it  fell,  according  to  one 
version  of  the  story,  in  Jerusalem,  according  to  another, 
in  Rome.  In  this  letter  the  Lord  commanded  His  people 
on  earth,  under  the  severest  penalties,  for  time  and  eter- 
nity, to  keep  Sunday  by  abstinence  from  all  labor,  by 
diligent  attendance  upon  public  worship,  and  in  general 
by  an  increased  punctiliousness  in  the  performance  of  all 
duties  prescribed  by  the  Fourth  Commandment.  The 
legend  is  only  an  expression  of  what,  in  some  form,  must 
have  taken  place,  if  the  Christian  Sabbath  was  to  rest  on 
the  same  legal  basis  as  the  Jewish. 

(H.)  The  early  Jewish-Christian  observance  of  the  sev- 
enth-day Sabbath  is  inconsistent  with  the  opinion  that 
the  Apostles  prescribed  the  first  day  as  a  change  of  Sab- 
baths. 

As  I  have  already  intimated,  among  the  Jewish-Christian 
churches  the  Sabbath  of  the  old  dispensation  was  probably 
kept  until  either  their  amalgamation  with  Gentile  Chris- 
tianity, or  their  withdrawal  as  isolated  and  to  some  extent 
heretical  fragments.^ 

Whatever  commemoration  of  the  day  of  the  Resurrec- 
tion became  established,  —  and  the  allusion  in  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews  to  assemblies  for  Christian  purposes,  as 

1  Zahn :   Gesch.  des  Sonntags^  p.  8. 

2  cf.  the  Appendix  to  Richard  Baxter's  treatise,  The  Divine  Appointment  of  the 
Lord^s  Day  proved:  Works,  vol.  xiii.,  p.  495.  The  whole  treatise  deserves  to  be 
kept  in  remembrance. 


THE   SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  225 

already  noticed,  affords  a  presumption    that  there  was  a  1 
stated  time  for  such  meetings,  —  it  is  not  probable  that 
the    Lord's    Day,    in   this   portion    of    the  early   Church,  \ 
could  have  been  regarded  as  the  Sabbath  of  the  Fourth   ': 
Commandment  transferred  to  the  first  day  of  the  week.  ., 
The  Jewish  Sabbath,  though  kept  from  motives  of  expe- 
diency, was  nevertheless  observed  as  a  Jewish  institution, 
as  the  Sabbath  of  the  Decalogue.     While  thus  hallowed, 
another  day  could  not  have  been  celebrated  as  itself  equal- 
ly and  alike  the  Sabbath  of  the  Commandments.     What- 
ever interpretation   may   be    given    to   the    Fourth   Word 
spoken  in  the  Mount,  no  Christian  Jew  could  have  sup- 
posed that  it  commanded  the  keeping  of  two  days  of  the 
week,  —  the   seventh  and   the  first.      Nor  while    he  was 
hallowing  the  seventh  day  as  the  requirement  of  Jewish 
law,  could  he  have  supposed  himself  to  be  fulfilling  the 
same  law  in  the  observance  of  the  first  day.     Nor  is  there 
the  slightest  trace  anywhere  to  be  found  that  he  regarded 
the  latter  as  a  successor  to  the  former,  and  its  keeping  as 
a  compliance  with  the  legal  requisitions  of  the  other.^ 

The  only  way,  if  I  do  not  misjudge,  by  which  this  posi-- 
tion  can  be  questioned,  is  by  disputing  the  alleged  con- 
formity of  Jewish  Christians  to  the  Mosaic  ordinances. 
But  this  is  not  a  matter  of  uncertainty.  It  is  clearly 
evinced  in  the  inspired  record  given  us  in  the  Book  of 
Acts,  and  is  reflected  in  the  early  traditions  of  the  Church. 
Not  to  review  the  evidence,  it  will  suffice  for  my  purpose 
to  refer  to  the  narrative  of  the  last  visit  of  Paul  to  Jeru- 
salem, recorded  in  the  twenty-first  chapter  of  Acts.  Paul, 
we  are  told,  met  James  and  the  elders  of  the  Church,  and 
declared  what  things  God  had  wrottgJit  among  the  Ge7itiles 
by  his  miiiistiy.  Aiid  when  they  heard  it,  they  glorified 
the  Lord,   and  said  tmto  him.    Thou  seest,   brother,    how 

1  Cf.  Zahn,  op.  cit.,  p.  33  ;  also  Professor  Fisher's  statements  in  The  Beginnings 
of  Christianity^  pp.  561,  562. 


226  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

many  thousands  of  Jews  there  are  which  believe  ;  and  they 
are  all  zealous  of  the  laiv.  And  out  of  deference  to  this 
zeal,  extending  to  the  national  ''customs,"  as  the  narrative 
states,  Paul  went  so  far  as  to  participate  in  the  temple 
sacrifices.  Though  the  Sabbath  is  not  specified,  it  is 
unquestionably  included. 

(III.)  If  we  turn  now  to  those  churches  where  the  observ- 
ance of  the  Lord's  Day  first  distinctly  appears,  and  assume 
that  the  custom  noticed  at  Corinth  and  at  Troas  repre- 
sents a  usage  prevalent  in  the  Gentile  churches,  we  are 
impressed  by  the  fact  that  nowhere  in  the  Pauline  Epistles 
is  there  any  association  of  this  usage  with  the  Jewish  cus- 
tom respecting  the  seventh  day.  And  more  than  this. 
The  Apostle  repeatedly  asserts,  against  influences  coming 
into  the  churches  directly  or  indirectly  from  Judaism,  the 
non-obligation  of  the  Jewish  Sabbath.  And  I  think  he  goes 
farther.  To  understand  his  language,  we  need  to  recall 
the  nature  of  his  mission.  He  was  the  Apostle  of  the 
Gentiles.  He  had  to  deal  with  men  whose  whole  religious 
training  had  been  in  the  bondage  of  ceremonialism.  Hea- 
thenism was  in  its  essence,  as  Paul  met  it,  a  servitude  to 
forms,  a  matter  of  rites,  and  days,  and  prescribed  usages. 
The  great  Apostle's  energies  were  strenuously  devoted 
to  the  gigantic  effort  of  extricating  these  men  from  their 
life-long  bondage.  He  strove  to  break  fetters  which  had 
been  forging  for  generations,  to  reverse  and  purify  and 
elevate  habits  of  thought  and  feeling  and  life  which  had 
the  fixedness  given  by  centuries  of  induration.  He  pro- 
claimed the  Gospel  as  above  all  times  and  seasons,  all 
forms  and  ceremonies,  all  questions  of  days,  and  meats, 
and  drinks.  For  him  to  have  made  the  observance  of  a 
particular  religious  day  a  continuation  of  the  Jewish  Sab- 
bath ;  for  him  to  have  repeated,  as  though  it  had  been  pro- 
. claimed  from  a  Christian  Sinai :  '*  Remember  the  Sabbath 
v.day  to  keep  it  holy.     Six  days  shalt  thou  labor,  and  do  all 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  22/ 


thy  work ;  but  the  first  day  (the  day  after  the  Jewish  Sab- 
bath) is  the  Sabbath  of  the  Lord  thy  God ;  in  it  thou  shalt 
not  do  any  work,  thou,  nor  thy  son,  nor  thy  daughter,  thy 
manservant,  nor  thy  maidservant,  nor  thy  cattle,  nor  thy 
stranger  that  is  within  thy  gates,"  —  for  him,  I  say,  to  have 
thus  legislated,  would  not  only  have  made  it  necessary 
that,  like  Moses  and  Joshua,  he  should  first  have  led  his 
followers  into  some  land  made  open,  not  without  miracle, 
to  their  possession,  where  they  could  set  up  the  new 
economy  unconstrained  by  the  laws  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
it  would  also  have  required  that  the  Apostle  should  him- 
self have  embarrassed  his  own  great  endeavor  to  raise 
men  by  the  inward  spiritual  power  of  Christianity  from 
the  bondage  of  ceremonialism  to  the  glorious  liberty  of 
the  children  of  God. 

Paul,  I  think  we  must  believe,  gave  his  pagan  converts 
no  command  to  keep  the  first  day  of  the  week  as  a  Sabbath 
of  the  Law. 

(IV.)  Nor  is  it  put  in  any  such  relation,  so  far  as  I  am 
aware,  by  any  teacher  of  the  Christian  Church  in  the  early 
centuries. 

What  the  primitive  conception  was,  may  be  definitely 
learned  from  authentic  testimony. 

Ignatius,  who  presided  over  the  Church  of  Antioch  at  a 
time  when  it  was  not  inferior  in  importance  to  any  church, 
writes  as  follows  to  the  Magnesians  :  i  "Be  not  deceived 
with  strange  doctrines,  nor  with  old  fables  which  are  un- 
profitable. For  if  we  still  live  according  to  Jewish  law, 
we  acknowledge  that  we  have  not  received  grace ;  for  the 
divinest  prophets  lived  according  to  Jesus  Christ.  ...  If 
then  they  who  were  conversant  with  ancient  things  came  to 
newness  of  hope,  no  longer  sabbatizing,  but  living  accord- 
ing to  the  Lord's  [Day],2  on  which  also  our  life  sprang  up 
by  Him    and    His    death,  .  .  .  how  can  we  live  without 

1  c.  viii.  (A.-N.  Lib.,  i.,  p.  179.)  2  AL,  life. 


228  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

Him  ?  .  .  .  Therefore,  having  become  His  disciples,  let 
us  learn  to  live  according  to  Christianity.  .  .  .  For  Chris- 
tianity did  not  believe  into  Judaism,  but  Judaism  into 
Christianity.  .  .  ." 

Not  more  than  a  generation  later,  Justin  Martyr — who 
has  left  us  the  well-known  description  of  the .  primitive 
worship  on  Sunday  —  engages  in  discussion  with  a  Jew. 
The  latter  expresses  surprise  that  the  Christians,  profess- 
ing to  be  pious,  do  not  keep  the  festivals,  and  the  Sabbath, 
nor  practise  circumcision.  Justin,  in  his  elaborate  reply, 
nowhere  alludes  to  the  Lord's  Day  as  a  fulfilment  of  the 
Sabbath.  He  argues  that  the  ancient  covenant  is  abro- 
gated ;  that  the  law  of  Moses  was  not  essential  to  piety, 
for  it  was  unknown  to  Abraham  ;  that  it  was  given  on 
account  of  transgression,  and  hardness  of  heart ;  that 
Sabbaths  were  instituted  as  a  sign  ;  that  their  spiritual 
meaning  is  realized  in  a  life  of  constant  piety  ;  and  in 
the  spirit  of  Paul,  and  in  a  way  illustrative  of  the  whole 
position  at  that  time  of  the  question  of  ceremonial  re- 
quirements, of  sacred  rites  and  holy-days,  he  says  :  "The 
Lawgiver  is  present,  and  you  do  not  see :  the  poor  are 
evangelized,  the  blind  see,  and  you  do  not  understand. 
You  need  a  second  circumcision.  .  .  .  The  new  law  re- 
quires you  to  sabbatize  every  day,  and  you,  because  you 
are  idle  for  one  day,  think  that  you  are  pious.  .  .  .  The 
Lord  our  God  does  not  take  pleasure  in  such  things.  If 
there  is  any  perjured  person  or  a  thief  among  you,  let  him 
cease ;  if  any  adulterer,  let  him  repent :  then  he  has  kept 
the  sweet  and  true  Sabbaths  of  God."  ^ 

And  so,  even  when  pressed  by  his  opponent  with 
Isaiah's  declaration  of  the  divine  approval  of  those  who 
keep  the  Sabbath  spiritually,^  Justin  simply  reiterates  his 
opinion  that  such  observance  was  enjoined  upon  the  Jews 

1  Dial.  c.  Tryph.,  xii.  (A.-N.  Lib.,  ii.,  p.  loi). 

2  Isa.  Iviii.  13,  14;  Dial,  xxvii. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  229 

on  account  of  their  hardness  of  heart.  Whatever  we  may 
think  of  his  interpretation  of  the  prophetic  utterances,  it 
is  clear  that  he  had  no  idea  that  the  Sabbath  was  hal- 
lowed in  the  worship  offered  by  Christians  on  the  Lord's 
Day. 

And   to  precisely  the   same  effect  is  the  testimony  of 
Tertullian,   in    a   treatise   which   has   been   inadvertently 
cited   to  establish  a  different  opinion.     Referring  to  the 
saying  of  the  Jews  that  God  sanctified  the  Sabbath  from 
the  beginning,  and  that  this  fact  explains  the  word  "  Re- 
member "  in  the  Fourth  Commandment,  Tertullian  com- 
ments :    *' Whence    we"  —  i.e.,  Christians  —  "understand 
that  we  are  under  special  obligation  to  observe  a  Sabbath 
from  all  servile  work  always,  and  not  only  every  seventh 
day,  but  through  all  time,"  ^  and  so,  he  continues  to  ex- 
plain, the  question   arises  what  Sabbath  God  would  have 
us  keep.     For  the  Scriptures  designate  a  Sabbath  eternal 
and  a    Sabbath    temporal.     The   temporal,  or  temporary, 
Sabbath  is  the  one  prescribed   in    the  Decalogue.^     The 
eternal  Sabbath,  foreshadowed  and  foretold  from  the  be- ' 
ginning,  is  fulfilled  in  the  times  of  Christ,  —  not,  evident- 
ly, in  the  hallowing  of  the  Lord's  Day  as  another  weekly  j 
Sabbath,  but,  as  he  has  just  intimated,  in  the  entire  conse-l 
oration  of  the  believer  through  all  time  to  the  love  and! 
service  of  God. 

And  precisely  this  is  the  teaching  of  that  ancient  Fa- 
ther—  the  disciple  of  Polycarp,  the  disciple  of  John  — 
the  saintly  Irenaeus,  a  man  whose  testimony  is  of  more 
value  than  almost  any  other  because  of  his  reverence  for 
apostolic  tradition,  and  his  freedom  from  any  spirit  of 
ambitious  leadership  or  partisanship,  or  speculative  inter- 
pretation of  inspired  teaching.     The  Decalogue,  he  main- 

1  Adv.  JiidcBos,  iv.  (A.-N.  Lib.,  xviii.,  p.  211). 

2  Manifestum  est  .  .  .  non  aeternum  .  .  .  sed  temporale  fuisse  praeceptiun,  quod 
quandoque  cessaret. 


230  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

tains,  is  of  perpetual  obligation.  He  distinguishes  it  from 
"  the  laws  of  bondage,"  and  from  ceremonies  which  were 
a  sign  to  the  Jews.  Yet  it  remains  —  not  in  its  literal 
form  and  special  provisions  —  but  so  far  as  it  is  an  em- 
bodiment of  laws  which  are  "natural,  and  noble,  and 
common  to  all,"  and  as  expanded  and  increased  by  the 
teachings  of  Christianity.  Sabbaths  were  given  for  a 
sign.  But  this  sign  is  not  unmeaning  nor  without  pur- 
pose to  the  Christian.  It  was  given,  he  says,  by  a. wise 
Artist,  The  Sabbaths  of  the  Law  teach  the  Christian 
that  he  should  continue,  or  persevere,  day  by  day  in  the 
service  of  God.^  The  solemn  setting  apart  of  one  day 
of  the  seven  is  a  symbol  that  all  our  days  belong  to  Him.^ 
It  is  not  necessary  to  my  purpose  that  I  should  defend 
the  Patristic  view  of  the  ancient  Sabbath.  The  Fathers, 
I  am  ready  at  once  to  concede,  in  their  antagonism  to  a 
Judaism  which  was  hostile  to  Christ  may  not  have  fully 
appreciated  a  Judaism  which  was  preparatory  to  His  com- 
ing. We  are  in  a  better  position  than  were  they  to  see 
the  true  relations  of  the  new  economy  to  the  old.  And, 
to  say  the  least,  their  interpretation  of  the  relation  of  the 
Lord's  Day  to  the  teaching  of  the  Old  Testament  is  no 
final  authority  for  us.  I  have  not  adduced  their  testimo- 
nies for  any  such  exegetical  purpose,  nor  in  any  such  rela- 
tion of  authority.  I  appeal  to  them  simply  as  witnesses 
that  the  early  Church  betrays  no  consciousness  of  a  legal 
institution  of  the  Lord's  Day  by  the  Apostles.  And  I 
cannot  but  think  it  impossible  that  they  should  have  ap- 
pointed the  Lord's  Day  as  a  continuation  of,  or  literal 
substitute  for,  the  Sabbath  of  the  Commandment,  and  the 
early  churches  have  remained  in  ignorance  of  the  fact, 
and  the  early  Fathers  have  written  as  they  did. 

1  Adv.  Haer.,  iv.  i6. 

2  The  opinions  of  the  Fathers  are  exhibited  with  candor  and  sound  learning  by 
Dr.  Hessey,  "  Sunday,  Its  Origin,  History,  and  Present  Obligation." 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  23 1 

(V.)  And  once  more  —  if  we  consider  the  circumstances 
in  which  the  Gospel  won  its  first  converts,  and  made  prog-  \ 
ress,  we  shall  see  that  it  is  improbable  that  such  a  com-  ' 
mandment  as  the  Fourth  could  have  been  regarded  as  of 
legal  obligation. 

The  first  triumphs  of  Christianity  were  largely  achieved 
among  the  poor  and  degraded.  Celsus,  in  the  second 
century,  mocks  at  the  new  religion,  because  it  was  recruited 
from  the  ranks  of  the  ignorant  and  low,  and  from  slaves. 
There  is  an  unbroken  line  of  slaves,  it  has  been  said, 
among  the  Christian  martyrs.  Christianity,  moreover, 
was  proclaimed  as  a  universal  religion.  The  Church  was 
conscious  of  a  mission  to  evangelize  all  nations.  The 
enforcement  of  a  positive  commandment  like  the  Fourth 
would  have  been  an  impossibility  in  the  early  propagation 
of  such  a  religion.  It  would  have  been  necessary  to  inter- 
pret the  statute  in  such  subordination  to  the  higher  law  of 
mercy  as  practically  to  have  suspended  its  operation. 
Those  who  needed  an  express  command  to  quicken  their 
consciences  would  have  readily  made  the  exception  the 
rule,  and  with  the  excuse  that  the  exception  would  practi- 
cally have  become  the  rule ;  while  the  conscientious  would 
have  been  constantly  exposed  to  the  snare  of  legalism,  or 
burdened  with  questions  of  casuistry. 

Moreover  —  and  the  fact  I  am  about  to  state  is  very 
significant  —  the  Apostolic  Epistles  and  the  early  Chris- 
tian literature  bring  to  light  many  a  question  of  practical 
duty  about  which  the  Christian  mind  of  those  days  was 
more  or  less  perplexed,  but  there  is  no  trace  of  such  dis- 
cussions as  must  inevitably  have  arisen  had  the  law  of 
abstinence  from  labor  on  the  Lord's  Day  for  master  and 
slave,  and  ox  and  ass,  been  regarded  as  obligatory  upon 
Christians  in  the  same  way  that  it  had  been  upon  Jews. 

The  view,  therefore,  which  I  am  constrained  to  take  of 
the  change  of  the  Sabbath  to  the  Lord's  Day  is,  that  the 


232  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

Apostles  approved  of  and  perhaps  instituted  the  latter  as  a 
day  of  special  religious  observance,  but  left  its  development 
into  usages  and  needful  auxiliary  regulations,  its  establish- 
ment as  a  Christiajz  Sabbath  in  social,  political,  national, 
and  religious  life,  to  the  free  development  of  Christianity 
itself  as  a  world-subduing  power.  Christianity,  they  seem 
to  have  believed,  would  care  for  its  own  day. 

They  did  not  legislate  concerning  it,  but  they  did  some- 
thing far  wiser  and  better.  They  implanted  principles  in 
men's  minds,  so  that  the  Lord's  Day  has  become  every- 
where recognized  as  a  Christian  Institution.  Men  may 
neglect  it,  as  they  do  all  the  other  blessings  of  the  Gospel. 
They  may  misinterpret  it,  now  in  this  direction,  now  in 
that.  Yet  it  stands  secure,  for  its  roots  are  in  the  Chris- 
tian's love  for  his  Redeemer,  its  branches  are  sheltering, 
and  its  fruits  healing. 

When  we  think  that  the  Apostolic  method  carried  the 
observance  of  the  Lord's  Day  victoriously  into  every  city 
and  town  and  village  and  hamlet  which  had  been  ruled  by 
Greek  and  Roman  Paganism,  that  it  changed  the  calendars 
of  the  nations,  that  it  controlled  legislation,  that  it  has 
secured  for  the  slave,  the  down-trodden,  the  ignorant,  the 
prisoner,  the  despised  and  outcast,  the  immunities  and 
the  privileges  of  a  weekly  day  of  rest  from  toil  and  of 
opportunity  for  spiritual  instruction  and  worship,  —  we 
need  not  fear  that  an  adherence  to  their  wisdom  will 
jeopard  the  day. 

The  revelations  of  God's  will  in  act  and  history  are  no 
less  authoritative  than  specific  commands.  A  principle 
which  commands  our  reason  is  no  less  sacred  and  impera- 
tive than  a  statute.  The  Resurrection  of  Jesus  was  a 
divine  act,  of  commanding  significance  to  the  ancient 
Church,  and  it  should  be  so  to  us.  It  may  well  be  the 
foundation  of  a  commemorative  observance  no  less  oblis:- 
atory  than  that  required  in  the  Decalogue.     The  Logos  of 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  233 

the  new  creation  is  the  Logos  of  the  old.  Redemption  is 
a  higher  revelation  of  God  than  Nature.  This  august 
counsel  and  purpose  of  Divine  Love  is  celebrated  by  the 
Church  on  the  Lord's  Day.  The  intrinsic  reasonableness 
of  such  a  celebration  is  a  divine  authorization  of  it.  Its 
Christianity  is  reason  enough  for  him  who  is  willing  — 
to  use  Ignatius's  most  expressive  words,  —  to  ''live  accord- 
ing to  Christianity  y 

Yet  this  is  not  all.  The  observance  of  the  day  of  the 
Resurrection  goes  back  to  the  time  when  Apostles  guided 
by  their  personal  direction  the  forming  customs  of  the 
churches.  It  has,  at  the  lowest,  their  approval.  When 
we  recall  the  early  universal  acceptance  of  the  day,  it  is 
fair  to  presume  that  —  indirectly  at  least  —  it  was  of  their 
institution.  When  we  add  the  recognition  it  has  had 
from  Christian  hearts,  the  Christian's  love  for  it,  —  how 
it  enters  into  prayers  and  hymns  as  well  as  creeds  and 
confessions,  —  we  find,  if  we  have  any  right  and  rev- 
erent sense  of  God's  authority  in  the  evolution  of  the 
history  of  His  Church,  a  sanction  which  is  a  seal  of  His 
Spirit.  I  can  see  how  a  specific  commandment  might 
convey  to  a  thoughtless  mind  a  quicker  sense  of  author- 
ity. I  can  imagine  that  to  some  the  darkness  and  tem- 
pest and  thunder  of  Sinai,  the  sound  of  a  trumpet  and 
the  voice  of  words,  might  be  more  instantaneously  im- 
pressive than  the  calm,  resistless  rising  of  Jesus  from 
the  unopened  tomb,  declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with 
power ;  more  impressive  even  than  the  mighty  attractions 
of  His  Person,  lifting,  for  all  believers,  all  the  days  of  all 
the  centuries  into  the  lis^ht  of  His  hallowinG:  Presence  ; 
or  than  the  descent,  noiseless  as  the  wino^s  of  li2:ht,  of 
His  creative  and  inspiring  Spirit,  calling  into  being,  on 
the  very  day  which  is  supposed  to  have  commemorated 
the  giving  of  the  law,  the  Christian  Church,  with  its 
tongues  of  flame,  and  its  law  of  the  Spirit  of  life,  and  its 


234  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

fellowship  in  truth  and  love,  with  its  holy  sacraments  and 
hymns  and  prayers,  and  its  universal  mission,  and  its 
risen  Lord  of  the  Sabbath,  the  Rest  of  all  that  labor  and 
are  heavy-laden,  and  its  weekly  commemoration  of  His 
Resurrection,  the  rhythmic  modulation  of  its  unceasing 
song  of  gratitude  and  praise,  and  its  vision  of  the  Jeru- 
salem which  is  above,  and  free,  and  the  mother  of  us  all. 
I  can  imagine,  I  repeat,  how  men  can  still  mistake  the 
synagogue  for  the  church,  and  be  more  restrained  for 
a  time  by  a  prohibition  than  by  a  principle.  But  I  cannot 
understand  how  the  Mosaic  and  Sinaitic  mode  of  revela- 
tion and  institution  can  be  deemed  more  authoritative 
than  the  Apostolic  and  the  Christian,  or  more  effective 
than  that  by  which  the  Church  of  Christ  has  actually  been 
led  to  commemorate  His  Resurrection,  and,  that  it  may 
do  this  more  perfectly  and  fruitfully,  has  also  been  led 
to  make  the  day  of  this  remembrance  a  period  of  rest 
from  distracting  care  and  toil.  Nor  can  I  esteem  the 
former  method  to  be  as  distinctively  Christian,  or  as 
congruous  with  Christianity,  as  the  latter.  Indeed,  I 
suspect  that  if  any  thing  of  the  former  sort  were  discov- 
ered in  some  alleged  ancient  manuscript  claiming  to  be 
the  record  of  such  Apostolic  legislation,  this  character  of 
the  document  would  at  once  stamp  it  as  a  forgery. 

Let  me  add,  —  though  it  may  carry  me  for  a  moment 
upon  ground  assigned  to  other  essays,  and  simply  to  guard 
against  misapprehension,  —  that  I  do  not  conceive  that  the 
argument  for  the  observance  of  the  Lord's  Day  should  be 
wholly  sundered  from  the  teachings  of  the  Old  Testament 
respecting  the  Sabbath. 

There  is  a  historical  connection  between  the  new  and 
Christian  day  and  the  older  Jewish  Sabbath.  The  Apostles 
and  early  Christians  found  a  religious  cycle  established 
for  their  use.  The  idea  of  the  week  as  a  season  of  alter- 
nate labor  and  rest,  and  the  adjustment  of  the  due  pro- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  235 

portion  of  time  to  be  allotted  to  each,  were  conceptions 
and  regulations  too  beneficent  to  be  lost  in  the  current  of 
human  history.     The  Apostles  left  this  religious  cycle  to 
make  its  way  by  the  force  of  its  past  history,  and  of  its 
intrinsic  reasonableness  and  usefulness.     And  to-day  so- 
cialists are  defending  it  on  grounds  of  humanitarianism.    ; 
It  is  a  fine  saying,  which  has  been  quoted  from  "some  of   1 
the  wisest  Jewish  teachers  :  "   ''He  who  breaks  the  Sabbath    \ 
denies  the  Creation^  ^ 

The  Apostles  also,  as  did  our  Lord,  gave  to  the  Chris- 
tian Church  the  Old  Testament  as  a  divine  Revelation. 
In  that  Revelation  is  the  Decalogue, — a  disclosure  of 
universal  and  permanent  principles  of  religion  and  moral- 
ity. Irenaeus,  as  we  have  seen,  distinguished  these  com- 
mandments from  the  rest  of  the  Jewish  law  in  so  far  as 
they  are  a  summary  of  natural  precepts  from  the  begin- 
ning implanted  in  mankind,  and  of  unceasing  obligation. 
The  Apostle  Paul  interprets  the  Fifth  Commandment  as 
containing  a  promise  to  all  obedient  children,  and  changes 
its  specific  reward  to  one  of  universal  application.  ''  Chil- 
dren, obey  your  parents  in  the  Lord  :  for  this  is  right. 
Honor  thy  father  and  mother  (which  is  the  first  com- 
mandment with  promise),  that  it  may  be  well  with  thee, 
and  thou  mayest  live  long  on  the  earths  ^ 

Though  the  Apostle  has  not  interpreted  authoritatively 
for  us  the  Fourth  Commandment  in  the  same  way,  and 
we  may  not  make  our  reasoning  upon  it  identical  with  a 
divine  ordinance,  we  may  nevertheless  find  in  it  instruc- 
tion of  permanent  importance.  Though  no  longer  liter- 
ally binding,  it  is  a  revelation  to  us  of  a  creative  counsel 
and  purpose  of  God  in  which  we  have  a  part  as  well  as  the 
chosen  people.  Though  limited  as  a  statute,  it  suggests 
universal  maxims.  Though  no  longer  formally  prescrip- 
tive, it  is  still  directory.     Though  not  for  us  an  outward 

1  Speaker's  Commentary,  i.  341.  2  Eph.  vi.  i,  2. 


236  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

ordinance,  it  discloses  permanent  and  authoritative  prin- 
ciples, to  be  conscientiously  applied,  as  principles,  to  the 
regulation  of  individual,  social,  ecclesiastical,  national  life. 

The  Fathers,  as  we  have  seen,  interpreted  it  as  institut- 
ing a  type  of  the  Christian's  constant  obedience,  and  of 
the  heavenly  rest.  But  it  has  other  meanings  and  rela- 
tions. It  bids  us  remember  that  man,  in  his  present  sub- 
jection to  the  law  of  labor,  needs  a  regularly  recurring 
season  of  rest ;  that  in  his  present  necessity  of  solicitude 
and  toil  respecting  earthly  things,  he  requires  a  weekly 
day  of  repose  for  the  special  contemplation  of  things 
heavenly  and  divine ;  that  in  a  sphere  of  existence  where 
the  relations  of  parent  and  child,  of  employer  and  em- 
ployed, of  the  strong  and  the  weak,  are  in  danger  of  being 
ruled  by  worldliness  and  selfishness,  it  is  the  duty  of  every 
parent,  and  every  employer,  to  see  that  those  dependent 
on  him  have  opportunity  for  the  cultivation  of  that  life  in 
which  there  is  neither  bond  nor  free,  but  Christ  is  all  and 
in  all. 

And  then,  as  thus  interpreted  in  the  light  of  the  Chris- 
tian Dispensation,  the  Sabbath  links  the  primal  Creation 
with  the  new,  redemption  from  the  bondage  of  Egypt  with 
redemption  from  sin,  the  rest  of  God  with  the  peace  of 
the  believer  in  Christ.  And  so,  by  all  that  was  promised 
in  Eden,  by  all  that  was  typified  and  signalized  in  the 
Divine  resting  on  the  seventh  day,  by  all  that  was  com- 
manded in  the  Decalogue,  by  all  that  was  fulfilled  in  the 
Resurrection  of  our  Lord  from  the  dead  on  the  first  day 
of  the  week,  and  in  the  inspiration  of  Apostles,  and  the 
gift  of  the  Spirit,  and  by  all  that  the  Christian  Church  has 
won  of  beneficent  power  through  its  commemoration  of 
this  day  through  the  centuries,  and  by  all  that  the  Chris- 
tian Sabbath  now  is  to  human  welfare,  the  Lord's  Day  is 
commended  to  the  reason,  and  the  conscience,  and  the 
love  of  mankind. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  237 


Let  us  not  mistake  its  obligation,  because  God  now 
deals  with  us  on  principles  of  liberty.^  Let  us  not  forget 
that  Christianity  is  not  without  its  sanctions  of  terrific 
force.  Ever,  for  all  abusers  of  its  sacred  freedom  ;  ever,  for 
all  violators  of  its  holy  covenant  of  spiritual  obedience  and 
unselfish  devotion  to  the  highest  welfare  of  our  brother 
man,  sounds  forth  the  inspired  word  :  He  that  despised 
Moses  law  died  without  mercy  imder  two  or  three  wit- 
nesses :  Of  how  much  sorer  pujiishmeiit  .  .  .  shall  he  be 
thought  worthy  who  hath  trodden  under  foot  the  Son  of 
God?  In  whatsoever  respect  or  regard  the  keeping  of 
the  Lord's  Day  is  of  vital  importance  to  mankind,  it  is 
of  permanent  obligation  ;  in  whatsoever  it  blesses  man,  it 
is  a  duty  to  Christ.  And  the  perfect  law  of  liberty,  which 
is  the  law  of  Christian  love,  is  of  all  laws  the  most  severe 
in  its  sanctions,  as  it  is  of  all  laws  the  highest  in  its 
authority. 

1  Irenaeus,  after  developing  the  spiritual  and  noble  interpretation  of  the  Decalogue 
in  its  relation  to  Christian  righteousness,  which  is  found  in  the  Fourth  Book  of  his 
work  Against  Heresies,  closes  by  reminding  his  readers  that  those  who  have  received 
in  Christ  "the  power  of  liberty"  are  thereby  more  severely  tested  than  were  men 
under  the  ancient  law,  —  magis  frobaiur  homo,  si  revereatur  et  timeat  et  diligat 
Dominum. 


238  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  VS. 


CONSTANTINE   AND   THE   SABBATH. 

BY    REV.     FRANKLIN    JOHNSON,     D.D.,     OF     CAMBRIDGE. 

The  influence  of  Constantine  on  the  religious .  thought 
of  the  world,  though  not  now  so  great  as  it  was  during  the 
latter  part  of  his  reign,  is  remarkable.  His  victories  and 
his  civil  policy  no  longer  affect  us  deeply  ;  **  but  a  consid- 
erable portion  of  the  globe,"  to  use  the  words  of  Gibbon, 
**  still  retains  the  impression  which  it  received  from  the 
conversion  of  that  monarch  ;  and  the  ecclesiastical  insti- 
tutions of  his  reign  are  still  connected,  by  an  indissoluble 
chain,  with  the  opinions,  the  passions,  and  the  interests 
of  the  present  generation."  To  the  great  body  of  his 
subjects  he  was  known  as  a  man  of  perfect  physical  pro- 
portions;  as  the  possessor  of  health  which  no  exposure 
could  impair,  and  which  he  preserved  from  infancy  to 
age ;  as  a  monarch  whose  majestic  form,  whose  affability 
combined  with  dignity,  and  whose  fondness  for  splendor, 
became  the  purple ;  as  a  soldier  unsurpassed  in  military 
genius,  in  courage,  and  in  celerity ;  as  the  ablest  politician 
of  his  age  ;  as  a  diplomatist  who  read  the  secrets  of  other 
courts  at  a  glance ;  and  as  a  ruler  who  could  be  cunning, 
stern,  vindictive,  and  even  cruel,  but  whose  virtues,  when 
contrasted  with  the  hideous  vices  of  his  immediate  prede- 
cessors, seemed  angelic.  To  the  few  who  were  admitted 
to  a  more  intimate  acquaintance  he  appeared  also  as  a 
lover  of  learning,  though  his  early  education  had  been 
neglected.  Even  in  the  camp  he  spent  his  evenings  in 
study,  and  the  Christian  writings  secured  his  diligent 
attention.  In  process  of  time  he  became  an  ardent  de- 
fender of  our  faith.     The  lustre  of  his  position,  the  extent 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  239 

of  his  authority,  his  habit  of  imperious  command,  his 
aptitude  in  rehgious  controversy,  and  his  determination 
to  protect  the  churches  from  their  persecutors  and  to  es- 
tablish them  on  firm  foundations,  combined  to  make  him, 
towards  the  close  of  his  life,  prevalent  in  their  counsels. 

Yet,  great  as  was  his  influence  on  ecclesiastical  affairs, 
and  great  as  it  continues  to  be,  it  is  sometimes  overrated 
and  misjudged.  By  many  he  is  called  the  author  of  things 
which  existed  before  his  birth,  and  which  he  did  but  sanc- 
tion. By  many,  in  such  hatred  do  they  hold  his  memory, 
any  opinion  or  any  measure  with  which  his  name  is  con- 
nected is  at  once  condemned ;  and  with  these  persons  it  is 
a  sufficient  refutation  of  a  view  to  refer  its  origin,  whether 
with  strict  truth  or  not,  to  one  for  whom  they  cherish  a 
boundless  antipathy.  His  attitude  towards  the  Christian 
sabbath  is  specially  worthy  our  consideration,  since  it  is 
not  always  understood,  and  since  it  may  afford  us  lessons 
of  importance.  Let  us  consider,  first,  his  legislation  con- 
cerning the  holy  day ;  second,  his  motives  in  its  enact- 
ment ;  and,  third,  the  light  it  should  shed  on  the  theme  of 
this  convention. 

His  first  and  principal  edict  in  reference  to  the  day  of 
rest  was  published  in  March,  A.  D.  321,  in  the  eleventh 
year  of  his  reign.  Whether  this  was  before  or  after  his 
adhesion  to  Christianity,  it  is  impossible  to  decide,  since 
the  date  of  his  conversion  is  unknown,  if,  indeed,  he 
may  be  said  ever  to  have  become  a  disciple  in  the  evan- 
gelical sense.  For  ten  years,  at  least,  of  his  career  as 
Emperor,  while  he  was  an  admirer  of  the  Christians,  and 
an  appreciative  observer  of  their  growing  political  power, 
he  was  a  regular  worshipper  in  the  heathen  temples.^  His 
vision  of  the  cross,  and  his  adoption  of  it  as  his  banner, 
did  not  mark  his  desertion  of  idolatry,  in  whose  practice 
he   continued   long,   like   those   Samaritans    that   "feared 

1  Gibbon,  ii.  250. 


240  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

the  Lord,  and  served  their  own  gods."  The  law  is  as 
follows  : 

"Let  all  judges,  inhabitants  of  the  cities,  and  artificers, 
rest  on  the  venerable  day  of  the  sun.  But  husbandmen 
may  freely  and  at  their  pleasure  apply  to  the  business  of 
agriculture,  since  it  often  happens  that  the  sowing  of  grain 
and  the  planting  of  vines  cannot  be  so  advantageously 
performed  on  any  other  day ;  lest,  by  neglecting  the  oppor- 
tunity, they  should  lose  the  benefits  which  the  divine 
bounty  bestows  upon  us." 

The  decree  is  extremely  moderate,  affecting  only  the 
business  of  justices,  of  artificers,  and  of  large  towns,  but 
leaving  the  greater  part  of  the  people  at  liberty  to  prose- 
cute their  affairs  on  all  days  alike.  Three  or  four  months 
later  it  was  modified  in  the  interests  of  mercy.  The 
courts  being  closed,  no  slave  could  be  freed  until  Mon- 
day, for  the  legal  forms  necessary  to  the  change  were 
quite  elaborate.  The  emperor  therefore  published  another 
edict  which  must  have  rendered  the  Christian  sabbath  the 
jubilee  of  the  oppressed  : 

''As  we  conceived  it  most  unfitting  that  the  day  of  the 
sun,  which  is  venerable  and  famous,  should  be  taken  up 
in  wrangling  suits  and  hurtful  altercations,  so  it  is  most 
grateful  and  pleasing  that  those  things  should  be  done  on 
it  that  are  most  desirable.  Therefore  it  is  our  pleasure 
that  all  our  ministers  have  leave  to  emancipate  and  manu- 
mit on  that  holy  day,  and  enter  all  such  acts  as  concern 
the  same." 

It  is  probable  that  another  modification  was  made.  On 
the  fragments  of  a  bath  rebuilt  by  Constantine,  and  now 
a  second  time  ruined,  has  been  found  an  inscription  in 
which  it  is  said  that  "  by  a  pious  provision  he  appointed 
markets  to  be  held  on  the  day  of  the  sun  throughout  the 
year."  "Thus,"  writes  Charles  Julius  Hare,  "Constan- 
tine was  the  author  of  the  practice  of  holding  markets  on 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  241 

Sunday,  which,  in  many  parts  of  Europe,  prevailed  above 
a  thousand  years  after,  though  Charlemagne  issued  a  spe- 
cial law  against  it."  The  decree  establishing  markets  on 
Sunday  seems  to  have  been  later  than  those  I  have  con- 
sidered already ;  for,  had  it  been  followed  by  the  decree 
forbidding  business  in  the  larger  towns,  the  markets  would 
have  been  closed  at  once,  and  would  not  have  been  found 
in  the  subsequent  centuries. 

In  our  received  text  of  Sozomon  it  is  stated  that  Con- 
stantine  commanded  his  people  to  honor  Friday,  as  the 
day  of  Christ's  death,  equally  with  Sunday  as  the  day  of 
His  resurrection.  In  our  received  text  of  Eusebius  it  is 
stated  that  he  enjoined  for  Saturday  the  same  cessation 
of  business.  But  the  statements  of  both  Sozomon  and 
Eusebius  are  viewed  with  doubt  by  the  more  careful 
critics,  not  only  because  the  text  of  both  is  corrupt,  but 
also  because  no  such  law  concerning  Friday  or  Saturday  is 
found  either  in  the  Justinian  or  the  Theodosian  code.  In 
short,  we  know  of  nothing  more  in  his  public  life  even 
indirectly  relating  to  our  subject,  unless,  perhaps,  we 
should  mention,  in  a  word,  his  requirement  that  his  armies 
offer  prayer  on  Sunday,  without  naming  any  particular 
deity  as  its  object,^  and  his  care  for  the  observance  of 
days  in  memory  of  apostles  and  martyrs,  exhibited  chiefly 
in  his  later  years,  when  his  repeated  crimes  made  him 
eager  to  find  in  external  rites  ^  some  solace  for  a  troubled 
conscience. 

The  legislation  of  Constantine,  when  viewed  as  a  whole, 
is  seen  to  have  been  extremely  mild.  The  courts  were 
left  open  on  Sunday  for  the  manumission  of  slaves.  All 
persons  outside  the  large  towns  were  permitted  to  pursue 
their  ordinary  vocations.  And  even  the  cities  transacted 
so  much  business  as  was  deemed  necessary  to  supply  the 
table  with  fresh  provisions,  and  to  secure  the  pecuniary 

1  The  form  of  the  prayer  is  given  by  Eusebius,  Life  of  Constantine,  iv.,  20. 


242  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

interests  of    the  agricultural   population,  for  whose  pros- 
perity the  Emperor  was  ever  solicitous. 

The  motive  of  Constantine  in  the  legislation  I  have 
reviewed  could  have  been  nothing  else  than  the  desire  to 
satisfy  his  Christian  subjects,  without  arousing  the  oppo- 
sition of  the  heathen.  This  is  evident  on  the  very  face 
of  the  principal  decree.  He  applied  it  to  the  cities ;  he 
exempted  from  its  operation  the  country-people.  Chris- 
tianity was  known  almost  exclusively  in  the  cities  :  it  was 
assumed  that  a  countryman  was  an  idolater ;  and  hence  the 
word  "pagan"  meant  originally  a  dweller  in  a  village,  a 
countryman  ;  for  the  country-people  lived  then,  as  through- 
out Europe  they  do  now,  in  hamlets  and  villages.  Neither 
party  would  be  displeased  with  a  law  which  expressed,  at 
least  in  some  degree,  the  convictions  of  the  Christian, 
without  violating  the  convictions  of  the  heathen.  The 
Christian  rested  in  order  to  celebrate  the  resurrection  of 
his  Lord  :  the  heathen  had  been  accustomed  to  a  festival 
on  the  same  day,  and  counted  it  no  hardship  to  rest  in 
honor  of  his  god,  when  the  fields  and  vineyards  did  not 
require  his  toil.  The  language  of  the  edict  is  chosen 
with  the  nicest  skill :  the  Emperor  refrains  from  any  ex- 
pression that  might  seem  to  indicate  a  Christian  regard  for 
the  day ;  he  uses  no  word  peculiar  to  the  Christian ;  he 
says,  "the  day  of  the  sun,"  employing  a  phrase  quite 
familiar  to  both  Christian  and  heathen,  and  obnoxious  to 
neither.  He  had  been  known  as  a  zealous  worshipper  of 
the  sun ;  he  had  filled  the  temples  of  Apollo  with  his 
offerings ;  ^  and,  while  the  Christian  would  interpret  the 
law  as  an  expression  of  favor  to  his  faith,  the  heathen 
would  interpret  it  as  an  evidence  of  devotion  to  the  deity 
the  Emperor  had  always  regarded  with  profound  venera- 
tion. The  subsequent  decree,  permitting  the  manumission 
of  slaves  on  Sunday,  would  meet  the  hearty  approval  of 

1  Gibbon,  ii.,  251. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  243 

the  Christian  ;  and  the  establishment  of  markets  would 
satisfy  the  demands  of  the  heathen.  As  if  to  guard,  with 
almost  timorous  care,  against  the  suspicions  of  the  priest- 
hood which  represented  the  old  mythology,  in  the  very 
year  that  he  pleased  the  Christians  by  commanding  the 
observance  of  Sunday,  he  pleased  the  heathen  by  com- 
manding the  regular  consultation  of  the  aruspices.  The 
whole  transaction  exhibits  the  hand  of  a  politician  who 
had  two  parties  to  govern  ;  the  Christian,  as  yet  in  the 
minority,  but  compact,  vigorous,  enthusiastic,  aggressive, 
growing ;  and  the  heathen,  corrupt,  savage,  eager  to  per- 
secute, and,  though  not  well  organized  or  well  led,  con- 
scious of  being  in  the  majority.  He  did  not  legislate  as 
a  Christian :  there  is  no  evidence  that  at  this  early  date  he 
had  adopted  our  religion,  and  it  is  certain  that  but  one 
year  before  he  was  bowing  down  to  stocks  and  stones. 
His  attitude  is  simply  that  of  a  shrewd  ruler  seeking  the 
harmony  of  his  people. 

We  are  prepared  now  to  ask  what  light  our  discussion 
casts  on  the  questions  this  Convention  has  met  to  con- 
sider. What  errors  should  it  enable  us  to  correct  ?  What 
truth  should  it  enable  us  to  enforce  1 

Many  writers,  hostile  to  the  Christian  sabbath,  refer  its 
origin  to  the  first  edict  of  Constantine.  They  maintain 
that  the  disciples  of  our  Lord,  while  they  assembled  on 
Sunday  for  worship,  did  not  rest  on  any  day  of  the  week 
until  commanded  by  the  Roman  Emperor.^  I  will  not 
pause  to  cite  the  Fathers  in  answer  to  this  assumption  :  it 
is  only  necessary  to  consider  the  decree  itself,  the  charac- 
ter of  the  monarch  who  made  it,  and  the  disposition  of 
those  who  are  said  to  have  received  it  in  such  a  docile 


1  See,  for  instance,  Cox's  Literature  of  the  Sabbath  Question,  i.,  257,  notes;  also 
The  Sabbath  Question  considered  by  a  Layman,  p.  yj.  Otlier  writers  seek  to 
create  the  same  impression  by  words  less  direct :  see,  for  example,  The  Sabbath,  by 
Sir  WiUiam  Domville,  i.,  277. 


244  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

spirit,  and  to  have  adopted  it  at  once,  without  a  word  of 
dissent,  of  discussion,  or  even  of  inquiry,  as  a  part  of 
their  creed,  and  as  their  rule  of  conduct.  The  decree,  by 
its  terms,  was  operative  only  in  cities  and  large  towns ; 
and  it  was  in  these  that  our  religion  had  become  predomi- 
nant. Its  author  was  the  shrewdest  statesman  of  his  age. 
The  churches  had  been  purified  but  a  little  while  before 
by  the  fires  of  persecution,  and  were  composed  of  persons 
ready  to  die  rather  than  suffer  the  least  infringement  of 
that  which  they  held  to  be  the  true  faith ;  for,  though  often 
in  error  as  to  what  the  Gospel  teaches,  they  were  ever 
ready  to  defend  with  life  itself  what  they  supposed  to  be 
its  doctrines.  Now,  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  the  most 
astute  ruler  in  the  world  undertook,  with  no  conceivable 
motive,  to  deprive  the  Christians  of  a  right  they  had 
derived  from  the  Apostles ;  to  force  on  them,  by  a  use- 
less law,  a  rest  to  which  they  had  been  utterly  unac- 
customed. We  are  asked  to  believe  that  he  directed 
his  legislation  specially  against  the  Christians,  while  he 
favored  the  pagans  by  exempting  the  larger  part  of  them 
from  its  operation.  We  are  asked  to  believe  that  the 
Christians  bowed  meekly  to  the  mandate,  partial  as  it  was, 
unjust  as  it  was,  subversive  of  their  rights  as  it  was.  This 
is  to  read  history  backward.  We  know  that  Constantine, 
even  while  yet  an  idolater,  favored  the  Christians  so  far 
as  he  could  consistently  with  his  views  of  wise  policy. 
We  know  that,  as  they  had  withstood  his  predecessors 
to  the  death,  so  they  were  ready  to  withstand  him,  should 
he  impose  on  them  practices  contrary  to  their  convictions. 
Every  thing  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  his  decree  was  a 
concession  to  their  views,  rather  than  a  violation  of  them. 
They  would  rather  perish  than  enter  the  courts  for  ordi- 
nary business  on  Sunday,  and  hence  the  courts  were  closed. 
They  observed  the  day  as  one  of  rest,  and  hence  he  en- 
forced rest  in  those  places  where  they  were  most  numerous. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  245 

Christianity  does  not  owe  its  sabbath  to  Constantine ; 
Constantine  borrowed  the  sabbath  from  Christianity. 

Some  opponents  of  the  Christian  sabbath  go  to  the 
opposite  extreme  in  their  hostile  statements,  and  represent 
the  decree  of  Constantine  as  the  "  result  of  the  corrupt 
union  of  Church  and  State."  ^  That  is,  instead  of  impos- 
ing the  day  of  rest  upon  the  Christians,  the  Emperor 
suffered  them  to  impose  it  upon  him,  as  a  condition  of  the 
bargain  by  which  the  ecclesiastical  and  the  civil  organiza- 
tions became  one.  We  need  only  look  at  the  date  of  the 
edict  in  order  to  discover  the  error  of  such  statements.  It 
was  published  long  before  the  union  of  Church  and  State ; 
and,  in  fact,  within  a  year  of  the  time  when  the  Emperor 
is  known  to  have  been  an  idolater.  Here,  again,  we  are 
driven  to  the  conclusion  that  he  acted  in  this  affair  simply 
as  a  statesman,  anxious  to  preserve  the  harmony  of  his 
subjects. 

Equally  erroneous  is  the  view  of  those  Seventh-Day 
Baptists  who  maintain  that  the  early  Christians  observed 
the  Jewish  sabbath  until  the  reign  of  Constantine,  and 
were  induced  to  transfer  their  rest  to  the  fir^t  day  of  the 
week  by  his  mingled  persuasion  and  authority.  He  had 
no  motive  whatever  for  seeking  to  effect  such  a  transla- 
tion ;  and,  in  fact,  no  reason  intelligible  to  us  has  ever 
been  adduced  by  those  who  find  his  hand,  rather  than  that 
of  God,  in  the  change.  His  character  and  his  policy  alike 
forbid  us  to  suppose  that  he  undertook  the  Herculean 
task.  At  the  time  his  edict  was  published,  he  was  so  little 
identified  with  the  Christians,  that  his  influence  upon  their 
doctrines  and  practices,  however  great  it  became  after- 
wards, was  insignificant.  We  know  the  fierce  tenacity 
with  which  they  held  fast  their  views  even  in  the  presence 
of  fire  and  sword ;  and  we  infer  that  his  prospect  of  suc- 

1  The  History  of  the  Institution  of  the  Sabbath  Day,  by  William  Logan  Fisher ; 
p.  54. 


246  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

cess  would  have  been  slight,  had  he  made  the  effort  attrib- 
uted to  him.  It  is  of  all  things  the  most  idle  to  say,  as  we 
must  if  we  adopt  the  view  now  under  discussion,  that  the 
whole  Christian  world,  compacted  by  persecution,  ready 
for  the  crown  of  martyrdom,  punctilious  to  a  fault,  bowed 
meekly  to  the  edict  of  an  Emperor  to  whose  garments 
still  cleaved  the  stains  of  idolatry,  disobeyed  a  plain  com- 
mand of  Scripture,  and  broke  away  from  their  immemorial 
traditions,  without  a  whisper  of  debate  or  dissent. 

And,  lastly,  our  reverence  for  antiquity  might  lead  us  to 
/regard  the  legislation  of  Constantine  as  a  model.  But,  on 
sober  reflection,  we  shall  dismiss  it  as  inadequate  to  our 
wants.  We  must  have  far  more  than  it  provides.  It  was 
a  step  in  the  right  direction  ;  and,  at  a  time  when  Chris- 
tian and  pagan  were  pitted  against  each  other  in  fierce 
opposition,  it  was  perhaps  the  best  that  could  be  done.  It 
was  adapted,  however,  to  be  but  a  temporary  expedient, 
and  the  progress  of  events  has  rendered  it  no  longer  use- 
ful. We  demand  a  civil  sabbath  which  shall  abolish  the 
concert-room,  the  rum-shop,  and  the  gambling-hell,  which 
shall  protect  from  every  disturbance  the  quiet  necessary  to 
repose  and  to  worship,  and  which  shall  bring  to  all  the 
sons  of  toil,  whether  in  city  or  country,  God's  boon  of 
rest. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  247 


THE    EUROPEAN    SABBATH    BEFORE    AND    SINCE 
THE   REFORMATION. 

BY   REV.    WILLIAM    RICE,    D.D. 

The  close  connection  between  the  religious  condition  of 
a  people  and  the  character  of  their  Lord's-Day  observance 
is  very  generally  recognized,  and  has  often  been  made  the 
subject  of  comment.  It  certainly  cannot  be  questioned, 
that  the  moral  and  religious  welfare,  alike  of  individuals 
and  nations,  is  greatly  affected  by  the  improvement  or 
neglect  of  this  sacred  day.  It  is  none  the  less  true,  though 
less  often  remarked,  that  the  character  of  Sunday  observ- 
ance, both  in  the  case  of  nations  and  individuals,  will 
depend  upon  the  speculative  theories  which  they  adopt 
with  reference  to  the  day,  and  the  degree  of  spirituality 
which  they  possess.  A  right  observance  of  the  Lord's 
Day  can  but  be  beneficial  to  life  and  character  ;  but  such 
observance  can  only  come  from  one  who  is  *'in  the  Spirit 
on  the  Lord's  Day,"  and  errors  in  theory  have  ever  led  to 
mistakes  in  practice.  This  principle  finds  its  illustration 
in  the  varying  and  checkered  history  of  Lord's-Day  observ- 
ance in  Europe ;  and  to  understand  aright  the  spectacle 
presented  at  the  Reformation,  and  the  later  history  of  the 
day  in  Europe,  a  brief  sketch  of  its  earlier  history  is  requi- 
site. The  contrast  between  ancient  and  modern  practice 
will  thus  be  seen,  and  the  causes  revealed  which  have 
gradually  yet  surely  wrought  the  change. 

In  the  first  few  centuries  of  the  Christian  era,  both  the 
seventh  and  the  first  days  of  the  week  were  quite  generally 
observed,  especially  by  the  converts  from  Judaism,  though 
the  observance  of  the  latter  was  never  more  than  per- 
missive. 


248  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

In  the  Western  Church,  and  among  the  European 
nations  especially,  the  Jewish  Sabbath  ever  occupied  a 
very  subordinate  position,  and  its  strict  observance  was 
early  and  emphatically  condemned.  Shorn  of  its  real 
authority  and  significance,  it  prolonged  for  a  time  a  linger- 
ing existence,  a  life  in  death.  The  first  day  of  the  week, 
on  the  contrary,  was  held  in  the  highest  esteem,  and  uni- 
versally observed.  In  the  language  of  the  Fathers,  it  was 
the  ''regal  day,"  the  ''queen  of  days,"  the  day  of  public 
assembly,  and  of  joyful  religious  worship.  Unlike  the 
Jewish  Sabbath,  especially  in  its  Pharisaic  type,  it  was  a 
day  of  liberty,  not  of  bondage.  With  little  of  prescription 
or  prohibition,  by  what  seems  to  have  been  a  voluntary 
and  spontaneous  movement,  the  day  had  been  made  a 
joyous  festival,  commemorative  of  the  resurrection  of  the 
Lord,  and  of  his  finished  work  of  redemption  ;  and  its 
observance  formed  an  essential  part  of  the  religious  life  of 
those  who  embraced  the  Christian  faith.  All  the  Fathers 
whose  writings  have  come  down  to  us  from  the  time  of 
the  Apostles  are  in  harmony  in  their  testimony  on  this 
point.  Ignatius,  and  Justin  Martyr,  and  Dionysius,  Ire- 
naeus,  Clement,  Tertullian,  Origen,  and  Cyprian,  all  declare 
that  the  Lord's  Day  was  observed  as  a  sacred  day,  and  that 
upon  this  day  special  religious  rites  were  practised  by 
Christians  of  every  sect  and  name.  Whatever  their  cir- 
cumstances or  surroundings,  however  great  the  obstacles 
to  be  encountered,  however  limited  their  control  over  their 
own  tim.e, — for  many  of  those  early  Christians  were  em- 
ployed as  soldiers,  or  held  as  slaves, — they  nevertheless 
"remembered  the  day  which  the  Lord  had  made,  to  rejoice 
and  be  glad  in  it,"  and  "forsook  not  the  assembling  of 
themselves  together,"  though  ofttimes  compelled  to  find 
in  darkness  and  concealment  the  only  opportunity  for  their 
united  worship.  Thus,  while  pre-eminently  a  religious 
day,  it  was   felt  to  be  rather  a  day  of   privilege  than  of 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  249 

obligation.  During  the  first  three  centuries,  there  is  no 
question  in  respect  to  this  fact.  While  the  Lord's  Day 
was  never  called  the  Sabbath,  or  confounded  with  the 
Jewish  Sabbath,  while  it  was  distinguished  from  it  as  an 
institution  of  the  new  dispensation,  to  be  observed  with 
different  rites,  and  in  a  different  spirit,  all  Christian 
authorities  speak  of  it,  as  of  other  things  received  from 
Christ  and  the  Apostles,  with  simplicity,  and  yet  with 
assurance.  They  celebrated  the  Lord's  Supper  on  that 
day  ;  and  he  who  absented  himself  from  the  Lord's  Sup- 
per virtually  severed  himself  from  the  "body  of  Christ." 
Indeed,  ecclesiastical  history  records  this  fact,  that  one  of 
the  test-questions  put  by  the  Roman  persecutors  to  those 
suspected  of  being  adherents  of  the  new  religion  was, 
"  Dominicum  servasti .?  "  (''  Hast  thou  kept  the  Lord's  \ 
Day?")  And  the  expected  answer,  that  sealed  the  death- H 
warrant  of  so  many  martyrs,  was  in  these  simple  and  yet  I 
sublime  words,  "  Christianus  sum,  intermittere  non  pos-  \ 
sum"  ("I  am  a  Christian,  I  cannot  omit  it").  We  do  not 
find,  during  this  period,  exhortations  or  appeals  for  the 
observance  of  this  day.  It  is  assumed  that  the  Christian 
will  observe  it ;  and  no  man  would  have  been  recognized 
as  a  Christian  who  failed  to  ''remember  the  Lord's  Day."   | 

The  edict  of  Constantine,  A.  D.  321,  marks  the  begin-  j 
ning  of  a  new  era  in  the  history  of  the  Lord's  Day.  ' 

The  day  which  has  heretofore  found  its  sanction  in  ■, 
apostolical  authority  and  example,  and  made  its  appeal  to 
the  individual  conscience  of  the  believer,  is  now  protected 
and  enforced  by  civil  enactments.  The  Church  is  growing 
more  po4verful,  but  less  spiritual.  It  can  now  claim  the 
right  of  self-protection,  and  demand  the  removal  of  all 
hinderances  to  its  peculiar  services  and  worship ;  but  it 
begins  also  to  manifest  a  disposition  to  impose  unwarranta- 
ble restrictions  upon  those  who  are  unwilling  to  embrace 
its  teachings.     That  the  members  of  its  own  communion 


250  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

are  losing  something  of  their  former  spirit  of  devotion  is 
also  painfully  apparent  from  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical 
enactments  which  now  follow  each  other  in  close  succes- 
sion, imposing  restraints  and  regulations  relative  to  the 
observance  of  the  Lord's  Day  upon  those  who  but  now 
were  '*a  law  unto  themselves."  With  the  growth  of  eccle- 
siastical power,  there  begins  to  be  also  a  demand  for  more 
of  pomp  and  circumstance  in  the  religious  ceremonials  of 
the  Church.  This  demand  becomes  more  imperative  as 
the  attempt  is  made  to  dazzle  the  eyes,  and  gain  a  moral 
conquest  over  the  minds,  of  the  barbarous  tribes  by  whom 

^  the  Roman  Empire  is  being  rapidly  overthrown.  Sacred 
festivals  and  holy-days  are  multiplied,  and  some  of  them 
begin  to  exceed  in  apparent  importance  the  day  of  the 
Lord's  resurrection. 

Meanwhile  the  Church  is  growing  in  arrogance  and 
pride,  as  well  as  power,  and  begins  to  assume  an  inde- 
pendent authority,  alike  over  the  belief  and  the  life  of  its 
members.  The  holy-days  of  its  own  appointment  being 
assumed  to  be  of  equal  sanction  with  the  primitive  Lord's 
Day,  it  follows  naturally  that  all  obligation  for  the  observ- 
ance of  the  latter,  save  that  which  emanates  frpm  the 
authority  of  the  Church,  is  soon  denied,  or,  at  best,  ignored. 
A  worse  than  Jewish  formalism  begins  to  pervade  the 

•  ceremonies  of  the  Church ;  and  the  Lord's  Day  is  no 
longer  welcomed  with  the  joyful  enthusiasm,  and  observed 
with  the  heartfelt  devotion,  which  marked  its  earlier  his- 
tory. Like  the  Galatian  formalists  in  the  days  of  Paul,  the 
Church  is  turning  again  to  the  '*  weak  and  beggarly  ele- 
ments whereunto  it  desires  again  to  be  in  bondage,"  and 
''observes  days,  and  months,  and  times,  and  years."     The 

,     result  that   followed   was    inevitable.     It   would    scarcely 

\  have  been  possible  for  a  people  as  devoted  as  were  the 
I  early  Christians  to  keep  reverently  the  multitude  of  holy- 
•  days  which  the  Roman  Church  established.     In  the  low 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  25  I 

state  of  spirituality  into  which  the  Church  had  fallen,  such 
an  observance  was  manifestly  out  of  the  question.  As  all 
could  not  be  regarded,  all  were  alike  neglected,  or  only 
observed  in  outward  form  and  hollow  ceremony.  The 
words  of  Christ  to  the  Pharisees  might  with  truth  have 
been  again  repeated :  "  This  people  honoreth  me  with 
their  lips,  but  their  heart  is  far  from  me."  In  defence  01 
the  festivals  inaugurated  by  ecclesiastical  authority,  Jewish 
analogies  in  Old-Testament  history  were  first  pleaded,  and 
at  length  attempted  identification  took  the  place  of  ana- 
logical reasoning. 

Thus,  in  theory,  the  Jewish  Sabbath  was  grafted  upon 
the  Lord's  Day  ;  but  the  only  practical  effect  of  the  un- 
natural and  unauthorized  alliance  was  to  "lade  men  with 
burdens  too  grievous  to  be  borne  "  by  adding  to  the  mean- 
ingless restrictions  with  which  the  day  was  burdened,  and 
in  which  its  sanctity  was  made  largely  to  consist.  Again, 
as  in  the  days  of  the  Pharisees,  in  the  "tithing  of  mint, 
anise,  and  cummin,"  " the  weightier  matters  of  the  law" 
were  omitted. 

The  re-action  against  this  ecclesiastical  Sabbatarianism, 
which  strove  by  church  authority  to  substitute  the  letter 
of  the  Jewish  Sabbath  law  for  the  spirit  of  the  Lord's-Day 
observance,  led  to  the  unbridled  license  which  has  con- 
tinued up  to  the  present  time  to  disgrace  the  history  of 
Papal  countries,  and,  by  exerting  an  undue  influence  upon 
the  minds  of  the  reformers,  produced  in  Protestant  Europe 
the  evils  which  will  a  little  later  ensfasre  our  attention. 

The  change  in  theory  and  practice  which  we  have  thus 
briefly  sketched  was  a  gradual  change,  effected  only  after 
the  lapse  of  centuries,  and  meeting,  at  every  stage  of  its 
progress,  the  most  decided  opposition  from  those  who  still 
clung  to  the  simplicity  and  spirituality  of  the  primitive 
Lord's  Day.  At  the  time  when  the  Reformation  began,  it 
was  complete  and  well-nigh  universal.     The  Lord's  Day 


252  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

was  nothin2f  but  a  festival  of  the  Church,  with  no  his-her 
sanction  than  that  claimed  for  the  innumerable  other  days 
created  by  its  authority,  and  even  sharing  with  other  festi- 
vals its  identification  with  the  legal  days  of  the  Jews,  as 
their  legitimate  successors.     As  I  write,  a  catechism  lies 
before  me,  containing  the  question,  "What  are  the  days 
which    the    Church    commands    to    keep   holy  ? "  and  the 
answer,  beginning  with    ''  Sunday,  or   the    Lord's    Day," 
enumerates    a   long  list  of   feast-days,  and  fast-days,  and 
saints'  days.      The   Fourth  Commandment  itself,  though 
/    called   into  requisition,  was  so  travestied  as  to  read,  *'  Re- 
member the  festivals."     It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  there- 
fore,   that    the    Lord's    Day  had    lost    its    hold    upon  the 
j     affections    and   reverence   of   the  people,  and  was  either 
1     openly  desecrated,  becoming,  in  the  worst  sense,  a  holiday 
\     instead  of  a  holy-day,  or,  at  best,  was  but  formally  and 
V   slavishly  observed. 

With  the  Reformation,  a  new  era  opens.  Luther,  Cal- 
vin, and  the  other  reformers  strove  to  emancipate  the 
minds  and  souls  of  men  from  ecclesiastical  bondage.  They 
protested  against  the  assumed  authority  of  the  Church, 
by  which  the  superstitions  of  men  had  been  in  great 
measure  substituted  for  the  oracles  of  God,  and  led  their 
followers  back  to  the  word  of  God  as  the  fountain-head  of 
wisdom,  and  the  only  infallible  guide,  alike  in  doctrine  and 
in  life.  They  therefore  rejected  the  vast  array  of  holy- 
days  which  the  Church  had  called  into  being,  regarding 
them  as  of  no  obligation,  and  little,  if  any,  value.  Their 
very  resemblance  to  the  Old-Testament  festivals,  and  the 
attempted  identification  of  the  one  with  the  other,  were 
'  rightly  regarded  as  reasons  for  their  abrogation  rather 
I  than  continuance,  since  the  legalism  thus  countenanced 
\  was  in  complete  opposition  to  the  true  spirit  of  Christian 
liberty.  The  mistake  of  the  reformers  lay  in  their  failure 
clearly  to   distinguish    the   Lord's  Day  from  the  Church 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  253 

festivals  of  merely  human  origin.  The  Church,  by  its 
own  authority,  demanded  observance  for  all  alike ;  and,  in 
refusing  obedience  to  what  they  regarded  as  an  unjust 
usurpation  of  power,  they  failed  to  recognize  the  pre- 
existent  sanction  of  the  Lord's-Day  observance,  which  had 
been  obscured  by  the  false  claims  of  the  Romish  hierarchy. 
Conceiving  the  day  to  be  of  purely  ecclesiastical  origin, 
they  denied  that  it  was  of  divine  appointment,  or  indis- 
pensably necessary.  They  saw  too  clearly  its  moral  and 
religious  value,  to  favor  its  abolition  ;  and  yet  defended  its 
continuance  on  low  grounds,  basing  their  arguments  large- 
ly on  considerations  of  expediency.  While,  on  the  whole, 
they  deemed  it  best  that  the  day  already  selected  by  the 
Church  for  rest  and  worship  should  not  be  changed,  they 
yet  considered  the  particular  day  to  be  a  matter  of  indif- 
ference, since,  as  they  claimed,  one  day  is  no  more  sacred 
than  another.  The  grand  facts  intended  to  be  commemo- 
rated by  the  Lord's  Day,  namely,  the  resurrection  of  the 
Saviour,  and  his  finished  redemption,  were  thus  to  a  great 
extent  forgotten  or  ignored.  The  sanctions  of  the  Lord's 
Day  which  appeal  most  powerfully  alike  to  the  intellect 
and  the  conscience  were  denied. 

Luther  says  :  "■  No  day  is  better  or  more  excellent  than 
another.  Some  one  day,  at  least,  must  be  selected  in 
each  week  for  attention  to  these  matters  (viz.,  worship 
and  instruction) ;  and,  seeing  that  those  who  preceded  us 
chose  the  Lord's  Day  for  them,  this  harmless  and  admitted 
custom  must  not  be  readily  changed  :  our  objects  in  re- 
taining it  are,  the  securing  of  unanimity  and  consent  of 
arrangement,  and  the  avoidance  of  the  general  confusion 
which  would  result  from  individual  and  unnecessary  inno- 
vation." 

Again  he  says  :  "  The  gospel  regardeth  neither  Sabbaths 
nor  holy-days,  because  they  endured  but  for  a  time,  and 
were  ordained  for  the  sake  of  preaching,  to  the  end  God's 
word  might  be  tended  and  taught." 


254  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

Still  more  strongly  the  same  principles  are  affirmed  by 
Luther  in  a  passage  often  quoted :  — 

"  Keep  the  Sabbath  holy  for  its  use  both  to  body  and 
soul ;  but  if  anywhere  the  day  is  made  holy  for  the  mere 
day's  sake,  if  anywhere  any  one  sets  up  its  observance 
upon  a  Jewish  foundation,  then  I  order  you  to  work  on  it, 
to  ride  on  it,  to  dance  on  it,  to  feast  on  it,  to  do  any  thing 
that  shall  remove  this  encroachment  on  the  Christian 
spirit  and  liberty." 

How  well  these  principles  have  been  reduced  to  practice 
by  the  countrymen  of  Luther,  we  shall  soon  see. 

The  Augsburg  Confession,  prepared  by  Melanchthon, 
and  adopted  in  1531  by  the  whole  body  of  German  Protes- 
tants, declares:  "Those  who  judge  that  in  the  place  of 
the  Sabbath  the  Lord's  Day  was  instituted  as  a  day  to 
be  necessarily  observed,  are  greatly  mistaken.  Scripture 
abrogated  the  Sabbath,  and  teaches  that  all  the  Mosaic 
ceremonies  may  be  omitted,  now  that  the  gospel  is  re- 
vealed. And  yet,  forasmuch  as  it  was  needful  to  appoint 
a  certain  day,  that  the  people  might  know  when  they 
ought  to  assemble  together,  it  appears  that  the  Church 
destined  the  Lord's  Day  for  this  purpose." 

The  Helvetic  Confession,  drawn  up  in  1566,  declares 
substantially  the  same  doctrine  :  — 

*'  In  the  churches  of  old,  from  the  very  time  of  the 
Apostles,  not  merely  were  certain  days  in  each  week  ap- 
pointed for  religious  assemblies,  but  the  Lord's  Day  itself 
was  consecrated  to  that  purpose,  and  to  holy  rest.  This 
practice  our  churches  retain  for  worship's  sake,  and  for 
charity's  sake.  But  we  do  not  thereby  give  countenance 
to  Judaic  observance,  or  to  superstition.  We  do  not  be- 
lieve, either  that  one  day  is  more  sacred  than  another,  or 
that  mere  rest  is  in  itself  pleasing  to  God.  We  keep  a 
Lord's  Day,  not  a  Sabbath  day,  by  an  unconstrained 
observance." 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  255 

Calvin  himself  claims  that  "  Christians  should  have 
nothing  to  do  with  a  superstitious  observance  of  days," 
and  that,  after  the  introduction  of  Christianity,  ''it  being 
expedient  to  overthrow  superstition,  the  Jewish  holy-day 
was  abolished."  Of  those  who  claim  that  ''nothing  was 
abrogated  but  what  was  ceremonial  in  the  commandment, 
while  the  moral  part  remains,  viz.,  the  observation  of  one 
day  in  seven,"  he  says,  "But  this  is  nothing  else  than  to 
insult  the  Jews  by  changing  the  day,  and  yet  mentally 
attributing  to  it  the  same  sanctity,  thus  retaining  the  same 
typical  distinction  of  days  as  had  place  among  the  Jews." 

"These,"  he  declares,  "go  thrice  as  far  as  the  Jews,  in 
the  gross  and  carnal  superstition  of  Sabbatism  ;  so  that 
the  rebukes  which  we  read  in  Isa.  i.  13  apply  as  much  to 
those  of  the  present  day  as  to  those  to  whom  the  prophet 
addressed  them." 

I  might  multiply  authorities  on  this  point,  but  time  for- 
bids. This  whole  matter  is  quaintly  and  yet  forcibly  put 
by  old  Richard  Baxter  :  — 

"The  Devil,"  he  says,  "hath  been  a  great  undoer  by 
overdoing.  When  he  knew  not  how  else  to  cast  out  the 
holy  observation  of  the  Lord's  Day  with  zealous  people, 
he  found  out  the  trick  of  devising  so  many  days,  called 
holy-days,  to  set  up  by  it,  that  the  people  might  perceive 
that  the  observation  of  them  all  as  holy  was  never  to  be 
expected.  And  so  the  Lord's  Day  was  jumbled  in  the 
heap  of  holy-days,  and  all  turned  into  ceremony  by  the 
Papists,  and  too  many  other  churches  in  the  world,  which," 
he  adds,  "  became  Calvin's  temptation  (as  his  own  words 
make  plain),  to  think  too  meanly  of  the  Lord's  Day  with 
the  rest." 

In  the  case  of  the  reformers  themselves,  and  their 
immediate  followers,  it  is  true  that  errors  of  theory  were 
to  a  great  extent  counteracted  by  high-toned  spirituality 
and   fervent   piety ;   and,  despite   their  doubts  as  to  the 


256  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

sacredness  and  necessity  of  the  day,  they  made  a  good 
use  of  the  privileges  and  opportunities  for  spiritual  growth 
and  religious  culture  which  it  afforded.  When,  however, 
the  religious  fervor  of  the  Reformation  began  to  subside, 
those  who  had  accepted  their  doctrines  without  imbibing 
their  deep  religious  and  devotional  spirit  were  hardly 
likely,  from  mere  considerations  of  expediency  or  utility, 
to  observe  in  a  fitting  and  Christian  manner  a  day  re- 
garded by  their  Fathers  as  so  unessential  to  the  system 
of  Christianity,  and  so  devoid  of  divine  sanction.  We  find, 
therefore,  that,  wherever  in  Protestant  Europe  the  influ- 
ence of  these  principles  has  been  predominant,  looseness 
in  Sabbath  observance  has  prevailed. 

Many  have  been  the  attempts  to  correct  the  existing 
state  of  things,  on  the  part  of  those  who  have  been  led  to 
adopt  higher  ground  with  reference  to  the  Lord's  Day ; 
but  their  efforts  have  met  with  but  indifferent  success. 
In  Holland,  indeed,  the  "orders  for  the  observation  of  the 
Lord's  Day,"  adopted  by  the  Synod  of  Dort  in  161 8,  did 
much  to  elevate  both  theory  and  practice  upon  the  subject, 
though  they  led  to  a  long  and  acrimonious  discussion, 
and  never  received  more  than  a  very  partial  acceptance 
from  the  theologians  of  the  country.  In  Germany,  the 
re-action  in  favor  of  a  more  truly  Christian  Sabbath  was 
more  than  counteracted  by  the  steady  growth  of  ration- 
alism, which  has  carried  to  the  farthest  extreme  the  lati- 
tudinarian  views  of  the  reformers. 

In  Great  Britain  alone  have  the  divine  sanction  of  the 
Lord's  Day,  and  the  religious  character  of  its  observance, 
been  fully  recognized.  Here  the  influence  of  Luther  and 
Calvin  was  less  felt  than  elsewhere  in  Europe,  and  the 
Reformation,  though  more  slowly  effected,  was  more  com- 
plete. The  Puritans,  it  is  true,  adopted  extreme  Sab- 
batarian views,  which  have  given  to  the  Lord's  Day  — 
especially  in  Scotland,  where  those  views  were  quite  gen- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  2 5/ 

erally  adopted — altogether  too  much  the  character  of 
the  Sabbath  of  the  Pharisees.  In  England,  however,  the 
violent  conflict  which  for  many  years  ragecT  between  the 
Puritans  and  the  Established  Church  issued  at  length  in 
the  very  general  acceptance  of  the  theory  that  the  Lord's 
Day  is  of  divine  appointment  through  the  authority  and 
example  of  the  Apostles,  and  in  the  recognition  of  its 
religious  observance  as  obligatory  upon  all. 

Having  thus  briefly  sketched  the  history  of  the  Lord's 
Day  in  Europe  throughout  the  nineteen  centuries  of  its 
existence,  and  traced  the  varying  influences  which  have 
left  upon  it  their  impress,  and  given  character  to  its 
observance,  it  only  remains  for  us  to  take  a  rapid  review 
of  the  actual  state  of  Sabbath  observance  in  Europe  at  the 
present  time. 

The  condition  of  things,  it  must  be  confessed,  is  most 
deplorable.  *'  As  for  the  Continental  Sabbath,"  remarks  a 
recent  traveller,  **  I  do  not  think  there  is  much  of  any. 
Railroads  run  generally  on  the  same  time-tables  as  on 
week-days,  save  that  extra  excursion-trains  are  put  on  for 
pleasure-seekers.  Those  who  can  afford  it  take  a  holiday 
on  Sunday  :  those  who  cannot  afford  to  take  a  holiday  keep 
at  work." 

Bad  as  is  the  state  of  things  throughout  Continental 
Europe,  there  are  yet  degrees  of  badness,  and  the  Papal 
countries  stand  much  lower  in  the  scale  than  the  Protes- 
tant. This  is  doubtless  attributable  in  great  measure 
to  the  fact  that  in  Protestant  countries  the  Sunday  is  not 
buried  under  a  mass  of  other  church  festivals,  as  it  is  in 
Papal  countries.  It  should  also  be  remembered,  that,  in 
the  Protestant  countries,  while  there  is  far  too  much  of 
dead  formalism  and  materialistic  infidelity,  there  is  yet 
more  of  real  spiritual  life  than  can  be  found  in  nations 
which  have  never  thrown  off  the  blighting  and  deadening 
influence   of   Catholicism.     Since  the  churches  are  open 


258  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  VS. 

/every  clay  in  Catholic  countries,  and  more  largely  attended 
'  on  some  of  the  feast-days  than  on  Sundays,  the  traveller 
sees  little  on  Sunday  to  remind  him  what  day  it  is. 
"  One  Sunday  evening  in  Venice "  (says  the  writer  I 
have  already  quoted),  **we  met  a  young  Congregational 
clergyman  who  had  lost  his  reckoning,  and  had  been  sight- 
seeing all  day.  He  had  observed  no  unusual  phenomena 
of  any  kind,  and  was  only  made  aware  of  his  sabbath 
desecration  by  being  reminded  of  the  day  by  his  American 
friends  in  the  evening." 

Says  Professor  Prentice,  speaking  of  Germany  :  "■  In  the 
country,  Sunday  seemed  to  me  better  observed  than  in 
the  towns,  because  the  Church  finds  fewer  rivals  for  the 
attention  and  interest  of  the  people.  Still,  Sunday  is 
everywhere  a  holiday  of  the  most  open  character.  In 
some  cities,  it  is  true,  business-places  are  closed  during 
the  morning,  especially  during  the  church  service  ;  but  the 
rest  of  the  day  is  given  to  labor,  hunting,  fishing,  theatre- 
going,  haunting  beer-gardens  and  public-houses.  On  this 
account,  many  a  poor  German  woman  dreads  to  have  Sun- 
day come.  Her  husband,  who  has  worked  hard  and  kept 
sober  through  the  week,  finds  it  a  much  more  perilous 
affair  on  his  weekly  respite,  and  returns  home  from  his 
Sunday  recreation  and  dissipation  in  no  favorable  mood 
for  domestic  peace."  ^ 

"Pleasure,"  says  Newman  Hall,  "is  the  authorized  Sab- 
bath-keeping of  the  Continent,  and  is  the  special  worship 
of  the  French.  Shops  of  all  kinds  are  open  till  noon, 
when  the  entire  population  turn  out  for  amusement." 

"Sunday  in  Paris,"  says  Dr.  Durbin,  "is  the  great  day 
for  fetes  of  all  kinds,  horse-racing,  theatres,  balls,  parties, 

1  A  writer  in  the  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  in  a  review  of  Mliller's  sermons,  asks: 
"  Can  the  sermon  ever  produce  its  legitimate  effect  in  Germany,  where  the  Sabbath  is 
desecrated  as  it  is ;  or,  rather,  where  the  Sabbath  is  both  theoretically  and  practically 
regarded  as  scarcely  more  holy  than  the  other  days  of  the  week  ? " 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  259 


concerts,  and  excursions  ;  nor  is  business  generally  sus- 
pended, although  in  the  after-part  of  the  day  you  will  find 
but  few  shops  open.  All  this  we  cannot  but  regard  as 
both  the  index  and  the  cause  of  immorality." 

The  distinguished  Proudhon  thus  speaks  of  France: 
"Sunday  in  the  towns  is  a  day  of  rest  without  motive  or  ( 
end,  an  occasion  of  display  for  the  women  and  children,  i 
of  consumption  in  the  restaurants  and  wine-shops,  of  de- 
grading idleness,  of  surfeit  and  debauchery.  The  work- 
men make  merry,  the  grisettes  dance,  the  soldier  tipples  : 
the  tradesman  alone  is  busy." 

The  Abbe  Gaume,  a  Catholic  authority,  speaking  of  the 
Sabbath  in  France,  asks:  ''Where  now  do  these  men, 
women,  and  children,  free  now  as  to  their  time,  resort .? " 
He  answers  :  ''  Ask  the  barriers,  the  theatres,  the  taverns, 
the  places  of  debauchery.  The  tables  of  surfeit  and  excess 
have  with  them  displaced  the  holy  table ;  licentious  songs 
are  their  sacred  hymns;  the  theatre  is  their  church; 
dances  and  shows  engage  them,  instead  of  instruction  and 
prayer.  Thus,  by  a  disorder  which  cries  for  vengeance  to 
Heaven,  the  holy  day  is  the  day  of  the  week  most  pro- 
faned." 

What  is  true  of  France  is  largely  true  also  of  Spain, 
Portugal,  Austria,  Italy,  and  the  other  Papal  portions  of 
Europe. 

In  Russia,  Poland,  and  Greece,  where  the  Greek  Church  , 
is  dominant,  the  condition  of    Sabbath  observance  is  no  | 
better.     It  is  no  unusual  thing  in  these  countries  to  see  '' 
gross  drunkenness  and  debauchery  following  the  church 
service,  and  participated  in  by  the  clergy. 

Indeed,  everywhere  in  Continental  Europe,  there  is  great 
lack  of  a  real  appreciation  of  the  religious  significance  of 
the  day.     If  kept  at  all,  it  is  but  as  a  day  for  rest  and     / 
recreation.     Where  work  is  suspended,  amusements  and 
dissipation  take  its  place.     Even  attendance  at  the  church 


260  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

services,  which  seems  to  constitute  about  the  only  religious 
feature  of  the  day  anywhere,  is  in  many  places  sadly  neg- 
lected, and  the  entire  day  is  spent  in  idleness  and  pleasure- 
hunting. 

Professor  Von  Schulte,  in  a  recent  article  in  "  The  Con- 
temporary Review  "  on  the  religious  condition  of  Germany, 
declares  that  '*  the  Protestant  churches  are  often  deplora- 
bly empty,  and  are  never  crowded,  except  when  some  cele- 
brated preacher  is  expected."  He  states,  also,  that,  while 
it  is  true,  as  a  rule,  that  **the  Catholic  worship  throughout 
Germany  is  better  attended  than  the  Protestant,"  it  is  also 
true  that  "  there  are  many  thousands  in  the  towns  who 
never  enter  a  church,  except  now  and  then  at  weddings, 
funerals,"  &c.,  and  that  ''this  is  true  alike  of  Catholics  and 
Protestants."  He  adds,  further,  what  will  be  found  to  be 
the  fact  wherever  the  Lord's  Day  is  disregarded,  —  that 
there  is  in  Germany  an  "  entire  lack  of  religious  home- 
culture." 

In  portions  of  Switzerland,  in  Holland,  and  also,  though 
in  a  less  degree,  in  Denmark,  Norway,  and  Sweden,  the 
Sabbath  is  more  carefully  observed  than  in  most  of  the 
European  countries.  The  church  services  are  more  gen- 
erally attended,  and  less  time  is  devoted  to  business  and 
amusement.  Yet  even  in  Protestant  Switzerland,  the  pop- 
^'  ular  elections  are  held  on  the  Lord's  Day. 

In  Great  Britain,  however,  alone  of  European  countries, 
can  any  thing  like  a  satisfactory  observance  of  the  Lord's 
Day  be  found.  Until  within  a  few  years,  it  might  have 
been  said  that  the  English  Lord's  Day  was  the  counter- 
part of  the  American  ;  but  to-day,  I  fear,  the  comparison 
would  hardly  be  in  our  favor.  The  Continental  Sabbath 
has  never,  since  the  days  of  the  Puritans,  gained  so  ifirm 
a  hold  in  England  as  it  has  already  obtained  in  our  great 
American  cities.  England  clings  firmly  to  the  religious 
idea  of  the  Christian  Sabbath,  and,  though  compelled  con- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  261 

stantly  to  meet  the  attacks  of  latitudinarianism  and  the 
fierce  assaults  of  infidelity,  has  thus  far  maintained  this 
principle  in  its  integrity. 

The  European  sabbath  of  to-day  is  thus   the  exponent 
of  the  religious  condition  of  the  nations  of  Europe,  and 
of    the    Sabbath   theories   which    they   have   respectively  » 
adopted.     Papal  countries,  bound  fast  in  a  dead  formalism,  \ 
and  making  of  the  Lord's  Day  but  one  among  many  church 
festivals,  have  lost  the  substance,  while  they  still  grasp  the     j 
shadow,  of   the   apostolical    institution.      The    Protestant 
countries  that  share  in  great  measure  the  spiritual  dead- 
ness  and  blindness  of  their  sister  states  of  the  Papal  faith, 
share  likewise  with  them  the  loss  of  the  Christian  Sabbath.      > 
Those  nations  only  which  unite  with  religious  zeal  a  deep 
appreciation  of   the  divine  sanction  and  spiritual  signifi- 
cance  of   the  Lord's  Day,  and  are  able  to  say  with  the 
Psalmist,  ''  This  is  the  day  which  the  Lord  hath  made ;  we 
will  rejoice  and  be  glad  in  it,"  —  those  only  find  this  day 
to  be  a  power  and  a  blessing,  and  reap  the  rich  benefits 
which  it  was  intended  to  confer. 

When  the  nations  of  Europe  shall  recognize  in  the 
Lord's  Day  not  only  a  day  of  convenient  rest  from  toil, 
but  also  a  day  of  joyous  religious  worship,  divinely  sanc- 
tioned, coming  down  from  the  Apostles,  and  intended  to  be 
to  the  Christian  more  than  was  ever  Sabbath  to  the  Jew, 
and  when  they  shall  celebrate  the  day  which  commemo- 
rates the  grandest  event  in  human  history  as  those  only  / 
can  who  "know  the  power  of  Christ's  resurrection," —  1 
then,  and  not  till  then,  will  a  true  Christian  Sabbath  be 
enjoyed. 


262  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 


THE   AMERICAN   SABBATH. 

BY   REV.    EDWARD   S.   ATWOOD   OF   SALEM,    MASS. 

It  needs  only  slight  alteration  of  accent  to  change  holy- 
day  into  holiday;  and  yet  what  practical  shift  of  empha- 
sis of  that  sort  has  been  effected  in  regard  to  the  American 
sabbath  has  been  wrought  by  a  multitude  of  factors  work- 
ing through  more  than  a  century  of  national  life.  That 
the  general  estimate  of  the  Lord's  Day  has  undergone 
serious  modification,  is  beyond  question ;  that  the  present 
'trend  of  popular  thought  is  towards  a  more  exhaustive 
denial  of  its  special  sanctity,  is  equally  evident.  There  is 
reason  for  sorrow  and  alarm  in  the  fact  that  the  nation 
has  been  swept  so  far  from  its  original  status ;  there  is 
ground  for  comfort  and  hope  in  the  fact  that  the  drift  has 
been  so  slow  in  spite  of  the  push  of  almost  irresistible 
winds  and  tides. 

The  actual  decline  in  sabbath  reverence  is  best  meas- 
ured by  contrasting  initial  and  terminal  facts.  In  1620  a 
company  of  Pilgrims,  after  a  wearisome  voyage,  making 
an  exploration  for  a  place  to  land,  are  driven  by  stress  of 
weather  to  an  unknown  island,  and,  finding  themselves 
unable  to  regain  the  ship  before  the  sabbath,  spend  the 
Lord's  Day  unsheltered  in  the  bleak,  wintry  air,  rather 
than  seem  to  trespass  on  holy  time.  In  this  year  of  grace, 
great  excursion-steamers  plough  through  the  same  waters 
on  the  sabbath,  loaded  with  pleasure-seekers,  and  the 
shores  of  Clark's  Island  echo  back  the  sound  of  careless 
laughter  and  the  crash  of  bands.  In  1621,  when  the  very 
existence  of  the  colony  seems  to  depend  upon  friendly 
relations  with  the  Indians,  chief  Samoset  and  a  company 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  263 

of  his  braves  make  their  appearance  on  sabbath  morning, 
and  commence  overtures  of  peace  by  a  proffer  of  traffic ; 
but,  in  spite  of  the  imminence  of  the  crisis,  the  sturdy 
Pilgrim  refuses  to  desecrate  the  Lord's  Day  by  business, 
and  the  embassy  retire  in  ill-humor,  leaving  the  aspect  of 
affairs  more  threatening  than  ever.  In  this  year  of  grace, 
on  each  sabbath  day,  railway-trains  are  thundering  north, 
south,  east,  and  west ;  metropolitan  post-offices  are  alive 
with  a  corps  of  busy^  workers  ;  manufactories  are  taking 
advantage  of  the  time  to  make  repairs  in  the  machinery ; 
steam-presses  are  clattering  with  preparation  for  the  issue 
of  the  morning  journals ;  the  cry  of  the  newsboys  with 
their  Sunday  papers  dins  the  ears  of  the  worshippers  on 
their  way  to  church  ;  public  pleasure-resorts  find  it  their 
most  profitable  day  for  business  ;  restaurants  and  saloons 
have  a  thriving  trade ;  and  sacred  ( ?)  concerts  and  a 
variety  of  entertainments  fill  out  the  last  of  the  holy 
hours.  I  am  aware  that  this  is  a  partial  showing  of  Ameri- 
can sabbath  observance :  there  is  another  side  to  the 
matter ;  but  these  things  are^  and  must  be  set  in  contrast 
with  the  things  that  were.  An  almost  equal  difference  is 
noticeable  in  the  legislation  of  the  two  periods.  The  first 
codification  of  the  laws  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Colony 
was  made  in  1648,  in  the  framing  of  which  Bellingham 
and  Cotton  had  a  large  share.  In  the  first  draught  of  those 
laws  by  Mr.  Cotton,  among  the  crimes  punishable  with 
death  was  '*  Prophaning  the  Lord's  Day  in  a  careless  or 
scornful  neglect  or  contempt  thereof."  This  penalty  was 
erased  by  Winthrop,  and  it  was  "left  to  the  discretion  of 
the  court  to  inflict  other  punishment  short  of  death."  In 
Connecticut  it  was  enacted  in  1643,  that  "Profanation  of 
the  Lord's  Day  shall  be  punished  by  fine,  imprisonment, 
or  corporal  punishment ;  and,  if  proudly  and  with  a  high 
hand  against  the  authority  of  God,  with  death."  The 
earlier   legislation   of   New  York,  as  represented   by  the 


264  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

"Decrees  and  Ordinances  of  Peter  Stiiyvesant,"  1647-48, 
makes  special  provision  for  securing  the  sanctity  of  the 
sabbath.  All  of  the  original  States  of  the  Union  had 
sabbath-laws  on  their  statute-books,  and  the  same  thing 
has  been  true  in  the  growth  of  the  Republic.  Every  com- 
monwealth in  the  land  makes  formal  recognition  of  the 
Lord's  Day  in  its  laws  ;  and  the  general  government  adds 
the  weight  of  its  sanction,  in  its  provision  for  a  rest-day 
for  its  employees.  But  in  this  year  of  grace  stormy  mass- 
meetings  demand  the  abrogation  of  these  laws,  and  widely 
circulated  journals  and  pamphlets  declaim  against  this 
infringement  of  the  rights  of  man.  The  provisions  still 
stand  on  the  statute-book,  but,  as  "■  inter  arma  silent  leges  ; " 
so  in  this  war  of  opposition  they  are  not  executed,  and  to 
a  great  extent,  all  over  the  land,  the  sabbath-law  is  a  dead 
letter  so  far  as  its  restraint  upon  individual  conduct  is 
concerned. 

During  the  first  century  and  a  quarter  of  American 
history,  the  shift  in  popular  sentiment  in  the  direction  of 
looseness  in  the  matter  of  sabbath  observance  was  exceed- 
ingly slow  and  comparatively  insignificant.  No  small 
stress  has  been  laid  on  the  demoralizing  influence  of  the 
war  of  the  Revolution,  and  by  many  it  is  thought  that  the 
'first  damaging  blow  was  then  struck  at  the  Puritan  idea. 
It  is  questionable,  however,  whether  far  more  mischief 
•was  not  wrought  by  the  epidemic  of  French  infidelity 
which  set  in  immediately  after  the  recognition  of  the 
Republic,  —  a  sneering,  mocking  unfaith  in  every  thing 
sacred,  which  became  the  vogue  in  high  circles,  and  num- 
bered among  its  adherents  men  of  brilliant  talents  and 
foremost  station,  like  Aaron  Burr  and  Thomas  Jefferson. 
The  religious  criticism  and  disbelief  of  the  times  were 
hardly  likely  to  leave  undisturbed  in  the  popular  reverence 
the  institution  of  the  sabbath,  which  was  one  of  the  mighti- 
est pillars  of  the  temple  they  were  endeavoring  to  over- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  265 

throw.  Through  the  open  door  of  American  gratitude, 
French  infidelity  found  an  easy  entrance,  not  to  say  a  cour- 
teous welcome.  The  absence  of  any  reference  to  God  in  the 
National  Constitution  ceases  to  be  such  a  wonder  when  we 
take  into  account  the  atmosphere  of  religious  distrust  with 
which  its  framers  were  encompassed.  It  was  an  atmos- 
phere, and  not  an  assault,  and  all  the  more  deadly  for  that 
reason.  It  was  the  breath  of  that  malaria,  more  than  the 
smoke  of  the  battle-field,  which  weakened  the  popular 
estimate  of  the  Lord's  Day,  and  which,  if  it  had  been  suf- 
fered to  spread  over  the  land  without  arrest,  might  have 
made  America  what  France  has  since  been,  the  arena  for 
the  most  extravagant  excesses  of  theory  and  the  wildest 
outbreaks  of  lawlessness  and  violence.  Fortunately  there 
were  "giants  in  the  land,"  in  the  pulpits  of  that  day;  and 
Samuel  Hopkins  of  Newport,  and  Nathan  Strong  of  Hart- 
ford, and  Timothy  Dwight  of  New  Haven,  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  last  and  the  early  years  of  the  present  century, 
made  a  masterful  stand  against  the  drift  of  th^  times,  and 
were  in  no  small  degree  successful  in  arresting  it. 

The  second  period  in  the  history  of  the  American  sabbath 
may  be  loosely  said  to  cover  a  period  of  some  forty  years, 
commencing  with  the  revival  and  wonderful  stimulation 
of  the  material  prosperity  of  the  country  after  the  close  of 
the  war  of  181 2.  There  had  been  a  previous  development 
of  industrial  enterprise,  but  it  seems  trivial  in  the  light  of 
to-day.  The  hum  of  the  spindles  had  not  yet  been  heard 
in  Lowell  and  Lawrence,  and  Manchester  and  Fall  River, 
and  the  great  manufacturing  centres  of  New  England. 
Buffalo  and  Chicago,  and  the  teeming  cities  of  the  West, 
had  not  yet  entered  even  into  the  dreams  of  the  most 
enterprising  capitalists.  Commerce  crept  slowly  in  dimin- 
utive vessels  from  port  to  port.  A  ship  of  five  hundred 
tons  was  considered  a  wonder.  Railways  and  steamboats 
and    telegraphs  and   labor-saving  machinery  were  yet   to 


266  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

come.  But  they  came  ;  and  between  1820  and  i860  there 
was  in  America  the  most  amazing  development,  the  most 
magnificent  flowering-out  of  industrial  enterprise,  which 
the  world  has  ever  seen.  The  financial  depression  of  1837 
arrested  the  progress  for  a  moment,  and  then  the  push 
onwards  was  more  impetuous  than  before.  In  the  hurry 
and  fever  of  that  hot  race,  sacred  things  lost  their  sanctity. 
The  spiritual  was  subordinated  to  the  material.  It  is  true 
that  within  this  period  religion  caught  something  of  the 
same  spirit  of  enterprise,  and  concreted  and  crystallized 
its  enthusiasms  in  great  benevolent  organizations,  like  the 
American  Board  and  similar  corporations.  At  the  same 
time,  it  is  undeniably  true  that  a  process  of  disintegration 
was  going  on  in  the  religious  sentiment  of  the  people. 
Spirituality  was  losing  its  hold,  and  business  was  tighten- 
ing its  grip.  The  money-making  day  was  getting  to  be 
more  highly  esteemed  than  the  Lord's  Day.  But  along 
with  this,  and  more  than  this,  immigration  was  introducing 
a  vast  alien  element  into  the  population  of  the  country. 
The  ocean  was  turned  into  a  vast  highway,  over  which 
day  and  night  tramped  the  unending  procession  of  those 
who  were  seeking  these  shores.  They  came  from  lands 
where  the  sabbath  is  a  holiday,  and  they  brought  their 
sabbath  with  them.  The  elasticity  of  American  laws 
regulating  religious  liberty  allowed  them  large  license  in 
this  matter  of  sabbath  observance.  The  coercion  of  the 
civil  statute  went  no  farther  than  the  restraint  put  upon 
open  business,  and  the  requirement  of  non-disturbance  of 
worshippers.  It  was  nearly  equivalent  to  no  restriction. 
Between  those  two  poles  there  was  room  for  a  whole  globe 
of  laxity.  Sabbath  pleasure-resorts  began  to  multiply ; 
sabbath  entertainments  were  inaugurated  in  the  great 
cities.  The  roads  grew  thick  with  the  dust,  and  the 
harbors  were  white  with  the  sails,  of  the  holiday  seekers. 
The  desecration  of  the  day  was  bad  enough  in  itself,  but 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  267 

it  was  worse  in  its  influence.  It  continually  stood  out  as 
a  protest,  and  flaunted  its  defiance  at  the  American  idea 
of  the  sabbath.  More  than  that,  by  contrast,  it  had  its 
fascination.  It  was  attractive  to  the  young  and  thought- 
less. Its  freedom  and  sparkle  were  tempting  to  the  man 
whose  confining  labor  had  indisposed  him  to  serious 
thought.  And  so,  gradually,  the  European  theory  began 
to  color  and  modify  the  American  theory,  encroaching 
more  and  more,  and  striking  its  stain  deeper  and  deeper, 
until  the  panic  of  1857  broke  upon  the  country,  and  over 
the  debris  of  ruined  fortunes  and  shattered  business  the  \ 
Spirit  of  God  marched  through  the  land,  and,  through  the  [^ 
new-born  religious  enthusiasm  of  thousands,  the  day  re- 
covered something  of  the  old  reverence  of  the  popular 
heart. 

The  third  period  in  the  history  of  the  American  sab- 
bath—  the  period  in  which  we  are  now  living  —  com- 
menced with  the  war  of  the  Rebellion.  In  a  paper  read 
before  the  National  Sabbath  Convention  at  Saratoga,  in 
1863,  Dr.  Philip  Schaff  said,  **The  severest  trial  through 
which  the  American  sabbath  ever  had  to  pass,  or  is  likely 
to  pass  in  the  future,  is  the  civil  war  which  has  now  been 
raging  with  increasing  fury  for  more  than  two  years.  The  j 
desecration  of  the  sabbath  soon  after  the  outbreak  of  the  ' 
war  increased  at  a  most  alarming  rate,  and  threatened  the 
people  with  greater  danger  than  the  Rebellion  itself." 
The  accuracy  of  the  prophecy  has  been  abundantly  proved. 
Probably  no  great  war  was  ever  carried  on  in  which  such 
strenuous  endeavor  was  made  to  secure  the  morality  as 
well  as  the  morale  of  the  army.  The  "orders"  of  some 
of  the  commanders,  conspicuous  among  which  are  *' gen- 
eral orders  "  of  the  President  himself,  read  like  sermons 
eliminated  of  their  dulness.  A  corps  of  the  Christian 
Commission  marched  with  every  brigade  and  division  of 
the  grand  army,  and    pitched    their  tents  or  built    their 


268  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

chapels  for  sabbath  worship.  RcHgious  books  and  news- 
papers were  widely  circulated.  In  field  and  hospital  alike, 
devoted  chaplains  labored  to  keep  alive  reverence  for  God 
and  his  laws.  The  postal  service  transmitted  thousands 
of  letters  filled  with  religious  counsel.  The  whole  atmos- 
phere was  tremulous  with  prayer.  And  yet,  in  a  little 
more  than  a  decade  after  all  this,  the  outlook  is  so  threat- 
ening, that  a  convention  is  in  session  in  the  metropolis  of 
New  England,  to  devise  measures  to  re-establish  and 
perpetuate  the  sanctity  of  the  Lord's  Day. 

History  repeats  itself.  Just  as  after  the  war  of  the 
Revolution  French  infidelity  saw  and  was  quick  to  embrace 
its  opportunity  to  infatuate  men  with  its  frivolous  criti- 
cisms upon  Christianity,  so  in  the  last  decade  English 
materialism  and  German  mysticism  have  taken  advantage 
of  the  relaxed  condition  of  the  popular  thought  to  push 
themselves  into  prominence,  and  secure  acceptance.  Next 
to  the  Word  of  God,  the  sabbath  is  the  Gibraltar  of  the 
Christian  system,  the  imperial  fortress  that  secures  the 
whole  Mediterranean  of  revealed  religion.  It  is  therefore 
nothing  surprising,  that  the  assaults  upon  it  should  be  so 
sharp  and  so  persistent.  Materialism  and  mysticism  both 
see  that  it  is  easier  to  induce  men  to  loosen  their  grip  upon 
an  institution  than  it  is  to  persuade  them  to  renounce  a 
system,  especially  where  their  hold  upon  that  institution 
has  been  relaxed  by  some  great  strain  of  national  history ; 
but  materialism  and  mysticism  see  with  equal  clearness 
that  with  the  sabbath  swept  away,  or  essentially  modified 
in  its  observance,  complete  victory  is  only  a  question  of 
time.  Happily,  but  none  too  soon,  the  Church  of  God 
sees  it  also,  and  is  beginning  to  prepare  itself  for  the 
coming  Armageddon  of  American  Christianity. 

There  are  three  things  that  at  the  present  time  specially 
stand  in  the  way  of  the  perpetuity  of  the  American  sab- 
bath :  — 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  269 


(I.)  The  impotence  of  the  civil  law.  To  what  extent  it 
is  wise  and  well  to  push  the  endeavor  to  secure  the  ob- 
servance of  the  Lord's  Day  by  legislation,  it  is  not  the 
province  of  this  paper  to  discuss  ;  but  so  long  as  restric- 
tive regulations  stand  upon  the  statute-books,  and  are  not 
adjudged  illegal  or  unjust,  they  should  be  enforced,  and 
their  annexed  penalties  inflicted,  whether  the  violator 
be  an  individual  or  a  great  corporation.  That  they  are 
operative,  except  in  a  trivial  and  farcical  way,  no  man 
pretends.  Now  and  then  some  poor  beggar  is  under  arrest 
for  card-playing  on  the  sabbath;  but  the  managers  of 
great  Sunday  excursions,  that  turn  out  to  be  perfect  pan- 
demoniums, coolly  pocket  their  profits,  and  defy  the  au- 
thorities to  touch  them.  The  inaction  of  the  law  breeds 
contempt  of  the  law  and  of  that  which  the  law  is  set  to 
guard.  The  paralysis  of  the  civil  arm  encourages  outrage. 
The  danger  in  this  quarter  is  incalculable.  Few  men  have 
even  read  the  sabbath-laws  of  this  Commonwealth,  and 
fewer  still  have  urged  their  enforcement.  It  is  well  judged 
by  interested  parties,  that  the  inefficiency  of  the  statutes 
is  due.  to  the  fact  that  there  is  no  solid  public  sentiment 
that  supports  them  ;  and,  where  this  is  lacking,  the  technic 
of  the  code  is  as  powerless  as  the  Pope's  bull  against  the 
comet. 

(11.)  A  second  danger  lies  in  the  false  notions  of  personal 
liberty,  that  are  obtaining  with  great  masses  of  the  popu- 
lation, and  which  are  humored,  if  not  fostered,  by  political 
leaders,  for  party  ends.  The  clamor  in  New  York  and 
Cincinnati  and  Chicago,  against  sabbath-laws  as  an  in- 
fringement upon  the  rights  of  the  individual,  is  not  spo- 
radic, but  symptomatic.  Communism  is  half-sister  of 
republicanism  ;  and  those  subtle  and  perilous  theories  of 
freedom,  that  privilege  every  man  to  do  as  he  pleases 
under  a  representative  government,  have  made  surprising 
headway.     Restraint  on  what   seems  to  be  the  reliorious 


270  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS, 

side  is  peculiarly  obnoxious.  Political  fallacies  re-enforce 
personal  preferences  in  the  attempt  to  secularize  the  sab- 
bath ;  and  in  a  country  like  ours  that  constitutes  a  for- 
midable alliance.  That  central  truth  of  state-craft,  liberty 
under  authority,  imperatively  calls  for  re-affirmation.  The 
subordination  of  individual  right  to  the  general  good,  the 
limitation  of  personal  privilege  by  the  common  need,  are 
integral  elements  in  a  stable  national  life :  but  in  some 
directions  there  is  strenuous  endeavor  made  to  remand 
them  to  obscurity ;  and  especially  in  the  matter  of  abro- 
gating or  neutralizing  sabbath-law,  in  the  name  of  liberty, 
there  is  surprising  persistence  and  enthusiasm. 

(III.)  The  third  and  perhaps  greatest  peril  is  the  apathy 
of  the  CJiristian  Chujxh.  The  assembling  of  this  conven- 
tion might  seem  to  refute  that  statement,  but  at  most  it  is 
only  a  late  confession  of  sin.  From  time  to  time  some  of 
the  pulpits  of  the  land  have  been  outspoken  on  the  subject, 
and  ecclesiastical  bodies  have  formulated  their  faith,  and 
then  buried  it  in  the  sepulchre  of  a  series  of  resolutions  ; 
but  the  work  has  too  often  been  merely  perfunctory,  and 
seldom  if  ever  has  been  followed  by  the  edge  and  flame  of 
enthusiastic  effort.  Our  dearly-bought  rights  in  this  mat- 
ter, inherited  from  the  fathers,  have  many  of  them  been 
wrested  from  our  hands  ;  and  the  Church  has  made  its 
little  moan  over  the  theft,  but  has  uttered  no  strong  protest, 
and  put  forth  no  mighty  endeavor  to  recover  its  lost  jewels. 
As  we  contemplate  the  future  of  the  American  sabbath, 
the  darkest  cloud  that  looms  above  the  horizon  is  the  indif- 
ference of  the  nominal  Christianity  of  the  land.  The 
Church  of  God  is  the  one  sovereign  human  instrumentality 
by  whose  efficiency  or  inefficiency  the  position  of'  the 
Lord's  Day,  in  the  estimate  of  the  coming  generations, 
is  to  be  settled ;  and,  since  the  beginnings  of  Christianity, 
no  graver  responsibiUty  has  been  laid  upon  the  disciple- 
ship  than  rests  upon  it  at  this  hour  and  in  this  particular. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  HISTORY.  27 1 


It  has  been  the  peculiar  boast  of  the  Christianity  of  the 
land,  that  in  no  country  was  the  actual  so  nearly  the  ideal 
sabbath  as  in  America.  There  have  been  times  when 
that  was  true.  The  shrewd  French  observer  Duponceau 
once  said,  that,  ''of  all  we  claimed  as  characteristic,  our 
observance  of  the  sabbath  is  the  only  one  truly  national 
and  American."  That  boast  is  not  wholly  without  war- 
rant still.  The  closed  doors  of  the  Centennial  Exhibition 
at  Philadelphia  preached  a  manly  and  eloquent  sermon. 
The  sabbath  stillness  in  the  halls  of  magistracy,  in  banks 
and  custom-houses,  in  great  manufactories  whose  din  and 
smoke  fill  the  air  the  other  six  days,  the  church-bells  that 
ring  out  in  city  and  village,  and  the  thousands  that  gather 
for  worship,  — these  things  must  not  be  forgotten  or  un- 
dervalued. And  yet  undeniably  there  is  a  vast  drift  of 
popular  sentiment  the  other  way,  —a  drift  that  is  steadily 
growing  in  volume  and  momentum,  which  has  already 
gone  too  far,  which  must  be  arrested  soon,  or  it  will 
become  irresistible. 

If  the  imminence  of  the  danger  be  not  sufficient  stimu- 
lus, there  is  enough  in  what  has  been  wrought  out  by  the 
American  sabbath  in  the  past,  to  inspire  unstinted  effort 
to  realize  its  possibilities  in  the  future.  There  is  a  myth 
concerning  an  old  painter,  that  by  happy  chance  he  com- 
pounded  one  day  a  certain  mordant,  which,  colorless  itself, 
possessed  the  power  of  heightening  every  color  with  which 
it  was  mixed.  By  the  help  of  his  discovery,  from  being 
a  commonplace  artist  he  became  a  master.  His  works 
were  renowned  for  the  marvellous  brilliancy  of  their  tints. 
On  his  canvas  was  reproduced  in  exactest  hue  the  waving 
emerald  of  the  forest,  the  silver  gleam  of  the  river,  the 
swimming  light  of  the  sunset,  the  infinite  azure  of  the  sky  ; 
and  everywhere  and  always  the  charm  of  the  picture  was 
due  to  that  colorless  nurse  of  color,  that,  by  its  strange 
alchemy,  transfigured  the  crudeness  and  coarseness  of  the 


2/2  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

common  tint.  It  is  not  mere  ecclesiastical  prejudice 
which  asserts  that  the  American  sabbath  has  similarly 
wrought  in  American  life.  The  student  of  our  legislation, 
the  observer  of  our  domestic  and  social  prosperity,  the 
inquirer  into  the  excellence  of  our  educational  systems, 
finds  everywhere  the  influence  of  reverence  for  the  Lord's 
Day.  Often  unrecognized  in  its  workings,  the  sabbath  is 
the  element  that  has  wrought  out  the  choice  beauty  of  the 
best  things  of  which  we  boast.  To  it,  and  largely,  we  are 
indebted  for  justcr  laws,  better  schools,  happier  homes, 
greater  security  of  social  order,  than  can  be  found  in  other 
lands  ;  and  therefore  let  it  be  perpetuated.  Therefore  let 
good  citizens  organize  for  its  defence  against  any  and  all 
comers.  Therefore  let  the  Church  of  God  recognize  the 
critical  hour,  and  prove  equal  to  the  emergency. 


Civil  and  Social. 


THE    SABBATH    IN    THE    STATE 
AND    IN    SOCIETY. 


CIVIL  LAW  AND   THE   SABBATH. 

BY  REV.    PRESroENT  THEO.    D.  WOOLSEY,    D.D.,    LL.D.,    OF  NEW   HAVEN, 

CONN. 

Since  the  time  when  the  English  colonies  were  first 
planted  in  America,  there  has  been  a  great  change  of 
opinion  in  respect  to  the  relations  between  Church  and 
State.  The  colonists,  whether  in  New  England,  New 
York,  Virginia,  or  South  Carolina,  agreed  in  the  duty  of 
the  state  to  protect  religious  establishments,  religious 
institutions,  and  days  of  public  worship ;  to  provide  for, 
or  to  require  that  the  people  in  their  parishes  should  pro- 
vide for,  the  support  of  ministers  ;  and  even  to  regulate 
the  conduct  of  individuals,  by  requiring  attendance  on 
worship,  and  by  punishing  neglect  of  it.  And,  besides 
these  outward  acts,  opinions  came  within  the  sphere  of 
legislation ;  errorists  of  different  kinds  were  fined,  or 
driven  beyond  the  borders  of  the  colonies. 

As  for  the  laws  touching  the  observance  of  the  Lord's 
Day,  the  colonies  did  not  essentially  differ  from  the  mother 
country.  In  England,  laws  passed  in  the  reigns  of  Eliza- 
beth and  James  I.  imposed  a  penalty  of  a  shilling  for 
absence  on  any  one  Lord's  Day,  and  twenty  pounds  for 
such  absence  through  a  month.     And  so  in  Virginia,  ab- 

275 


2^6  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

sence  from  church  on  Sunday  rendered  a  person  liable  to 
pay  fifty  pounds  of  tobacco  as  a  fine  ;  but  Quakers  and 
other  recusants,  who  totally  absented  themselves,  were 
liable  to  the  penalty  of  twenty  pounds  sterling  above 
spoken  of,  which  was  imposed  by  a  statute  of  23  Elizabeth. 
These  laws  seem  to  have  been  passed  in  order  to  keep 
dissenters,  by  means  of  penalties,  out  of  the  colony.  The 
Sunday  laws  of  the  Puritan  colonies  had  a  higher  motive, 
—  that  of  bringing  all  classes  of  men  within  the  reach 
of  religious  truth.  The  almost  universal  belief  in  these 
northern  colonies  seems  to  have  been  that  the  Lord's  Day 
rested  on  the  same  divine  command  with  the  Jewish 
seventh  day  ;  and  they  held  that  the  state  ought  to  see 
that  it  was  kept  holy  according  to  the  law  given  to  the 
Jews,  although  they  by  no  means  claimed  that  every  reli- 
gious or  moral  obligation,  even  of  an  outward  nature, 
ought  to  be  enforced  by  civil  law  and  penalty. 

These  ancient  statutes  have  gone  out  of  use,  or  have 
been  repealed  in  great  measure.  There  still  remain,  how- 
ever, on  the  statute-books,  laws  forbidding  certain  actions 
on  the  Lord's  Day,  or  the  Christian  day  of  rest.  Let  us 
see  by  the  statutes  of  Connecticut,  as  revised  in  1875, 
and  by  those  of  New  York  and  Massachusetts,  what  these 
laws  actually  are. 

I.  First,  we  notice,  as  it  respects  Connecticut,  a  provis- 
ion which  is  to  be  found,  probably,  in  all  the  laws  of 
English-speaking  states,  that  "  all  civil  processes  issued  or 
served  between  sunrise  and  sunset  on  Sunday  shall  be 
void."  Not  only  the  laws  of  the  several  States,  but  those 
of  the  United  States,  secure  this  immunity  from  civil 
processes  on  the  first  day  of  the  week.  And  it  is  to  be 
defended,  apart  from  any  desire  to  sustain  the  institutions 
of  Christianity,  by  the  importance,  both  to  civil  officers 
and  to  private  persons,  of  a  day  of  rest,  and,  in  the  case 
of  the  latter,  by  the  necessity,  on  the  day  devoted  to  reli- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     2-]^ 

gion,  of  being  free  from  harassing  cares,  as  well  as  by  the 
difficulty  of  making  such  arrangements  as  a  civil  process 
might  require,  if  served  on  a  day  when  men  in  general  are 
away  from  their  places  of  business.  In  other  words,  the 
law  must,  in  a  practical  way,  consider  the  business-habits 
of  society,  whatever  they  may  be,  and  accommodate  itself 
to  them  as  far  as  is  consistent  with  general  justice. 

The  other  statutes  in  the  present  code  I  will  give  verba- 
tim (General  Statutes  of  Connecticut,  revision  of  1875, 
title  20,  chap,  ix.,  sects.  57-63,  pp.  521,  522)  :  — 

"  Sect.  ^'j.  Every  person  who  shall  travel,  or  do  any  secular  busi- 
ness or  labor,  except  works  of  necessity  or  mercy,  or  keep  open  any 
shop,  warehouse,  or  manufacturing  or  mechanical  establishment,  or 
expose  any  property  for  sale,  or  engage  in  any  sport  or  recreation  on 
Sunday,  between  sunrise  and  sunset,  shall  be  fined  not  more  than  four 
dollars,  nor  less  than  one  dollar ;  but  haywards  may  perform  all  their 
official  duties  on  said  day. 

"  Sect.  58.  Every  person  who  shall  be  present  at  any  concert  of 
music,  dancing,  or  other  public  diversion  on  Sunday,  or  on  the  even- 
ing thereof,  shall  be  fined  four  dollars. 

"  Sect.  59.  Prosecutions  for  violations  of  the  two  preceding  sec- 
tions shall  be  exhibited  within  one  month  after  the  commission  of  the 
offence. 

"  Sect.  60.  Every  person  who,  within  the  hours  of  twelve  o'clock 
Saturday  night  and  twelve  o'clock  Sunday  night  next  following,  shall 
keep  open  any  room,  place,  or  enclosure,  or  any  building,  or  any  struc- 
ture of  any  kind  or  description,  in  which  it  is  reputed  that  intoxicating 
liquors  are  exposed  for  sale,  or  that  any  sports  or  games  of  chance 
are  carried  on  or  allowed,  shall  be  fined  forty  dollars,  to  be  paid  to 
the  town  where  the  offence  is  committed,  or  imprisoned  thirty  days 
or  both. 

"Sect.  61.  All  prosecutions  for  a  violation  of  the  preceding  sec- 
tion shall  be  determined  by  a  justice  of  the  peace,  or  police  or  city 
court. 

"  Sect.  62.  Every  proprietor  or  driver  of  any  vehicle  not  employed 
in  carrying  the  United-States  mail,  who  shall  allow  any  person  to 
travel  thereon  on  Sunday  between  sunrise  and  sunset,  except  from 
necessity  or  mercy,  shall  be  fined  twenty  dollars,  to  be  paid  to  the 
town  in  which  the  offence  is  committed. 


278  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  VS. 

"  Sect.  63.  No  person  who  conscientiously  believes  that  the 
seventh  day  of  the  week  ought  to  be  observed  as  the  sabbath,  and 
actually  refrains  from  secular  business  and  labor  on  that  day,  shall 
be  liable  to  prosecution  for  performing  secular  business  and  labor  on 
such  day  (i.e.,  on  Sunday),  provided  he  disturbs  no  other  person  while 
attending  public  worship." 

By  decisions  of  the  courts,  it  is  settled  that  notes  given 
or  contracts  made  on  Sunday  are  void  ;  any  money  loaned 
cannot  be  recovered;  that  an  apprentice  compelled  to  vio- 
late Sunday  is  not  bound  to  remain  with  his  master ;  but 
that  the  value  of  a  horse  hired  on  Sunday,  and  killed  by 
the  hirer,  may  be  recovered. 

The  first  of  these  provisions  belongs  to  the  year  1702  ; 
the  second  and  third,  to  1784;  the  rest,  to  this  century. 
And  especially  the  law  against  drinking-places,  &c.,  open 
on  Sunday,  is  quite  recent,  having  been  enacted  in  1872. 
This  recent  date  of  the  law  shows  not  that  law  was  loose 
before,  but  that  such  things  have  crept  into  the  State  in 
the  more  modern  times. 

The  Sunday  laws  of  Massachusetts  and  New  York,  in 
their  principal  provisions,  are  as  follows  :  — 

First,  The  Sunday  laws  of  Massachusetts,  in  the  digest 
of  i860,  were  in  substance  as  follows  :  — 

"Section  i.  Any  one  who  keeps  open  a  ware  or  work-house,  or 
engages  in  any  labor,  business,  or  work,  except  works  of  necessity  or 
mercy,  or  is  present  at  any  dancing,  or  public  diversion,  show  or  enter- 
tainment, or  takes  part  in  any  sport,  game,  or  play  on  the  Lord's  Day, 
shall  be  punished  by  a  fine  not  exceeding  ten  dollars. 

"  Sect.  2.  Whoever  travels  on  the  Lord's  Day,  except  for  neces- 
sity or  mercy,  shall  be  punished,  not  exceeding  ten  dollars  for  each 
offence." 

Sect.  3  has  been  superseded. 

"Sect.  4.  Persons  present  at  games,  &c.,  except  concerts  of 
sacred  music,  on  the  evening  of  the  Lord's  Day  or  the  evening  next 
preceding,  unless  such  sport  or  game,  &c.,  is  licensed  by  persons 
authorized  to  grant  licenses,  shall  be  punished,  not  exceeding  five 
dollars  for  each  offence. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     2yg 

"  Sect.  5.  No  person  licensed  to  keep  a  house  of  public  entertain- 
ment shall  entertain,  in  his  house  or  any  place  appurtenant  thereto, 
any  strangers  not  being  travellers,  drinking  and  spending  time  there 
on  the  Lord's  Day  or  the  evening  preceding.  The  penalty  to  the  inn- 
holder  for  so  entertaining  is  not  to  exceed  five  dollars  for  each  offence. 
"  Sect.  6.  Civil  processes  are  not  to  be  executed  on  the  Lord's 
Day;  the  person  executing  to  be  liable  to  the  party  aggrieved  in  the 
same  damages  as  if  he  showed  no  process. 

"  Sect.  7.  Rude  or  indecent  behavior  within  a  house  of  pubhc 
worship  on  the  Lord's  Day  may  be  punished  by  fine  not  exceeding 
ten  dollars." 

Sect.  8  makes  it  the  duty  of  sheriffs,  grand-jurors, 
and  constables,  to  inquire  into,  and  inform  of,  offences 
against  this  act. 

Sect.  9  exempts  those  who  observe  the  seventh  day 
of  the  week  from  penalties,  provided  they  refrain  from 
business  on  that  day,  &c.,  and  disturb  no  other  persons 
on  the  Lord's  Day. 

"Sect.  id.  Prosecutions  for  violations  of  those  laws  relating  to  the 
Lord's  Day  must  be  commenced  within  six  months  after  the  offence. 

"  Sect,  i  i.  Innholders  or  victuallers  keeping  or  allowing  on  their 
premises  gaming-implements,  who  on  the  Lord's  Day  use  or  allow 
said  implements  to  be  used,  shall  for  the  first  offence  forfeit  not 
exceeding  one  hundred  dollars,  or  be  imprisoned  in  the  common 
prison ;  and  for  every  successive  offence  be  imprisoned  in  a  house  of 
correction  for  a  time  not  exceeding  a  year ;  and  shall  give  securities 
for  good  behavior,  and  especially  not  to  repeat  this  offence. 

"Sect.  12.  The  Lord's  Day  is  defined  as  continuing  from  mid- 
night succeeding  Saturday  until  the  next  midnight." 

The  Sunday  laws  of  New  York  are  in  substance  as  fol- 
lows (Fay's  Digest,  1874) :  — 

No  process  or  warrant,  &c.,  shall  be  served  or  executed 
on  Sunday,  except  in  cases  of  breach  of  the  peace  or  ap- 
prehended breach ;  or  for  apprehension  of  persons  charged 
with  crimes  and  misdemeanors,  except  when  specially 
authorized  by  law. 

There  shall  be  no  sporting,  hunting,   fishing,  playing, 


280  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

horse-racing,  frequenting  tippling-houses,  or  unlawful  exer- 
cises or  pastimes,  on  the  first  day  of  the  week,  called  Sun- 
day ;  nor  shall  any  person  travel  on  that  day,  unless  in  cases 
of  charity  or  necessity,  or  in  going  to  or  from  some  church 
or  place  of  public  worship  within  the  distance  of  twenty 
miles,  or  in  going  for  medical  aid  or  medicines,  or  in  visit- 
ing the  sick  and  returning ;  or  in  carrying  the  mail  of  the 
United  States,  or  in  going  express  by  order  of  some  public 
officer,  or  in  removing  his  family  or  household  furniture 
when  such  removal  was  commenced  on  some  other  day. 
Nor  shall  there  be  any  servile  labor  or  recreation  or  work- 
ing on  that  day,  except  works  of  necessity  and  mercy, 
unless  done  by  some  person  who  uniformly  keeps  the  last 
day  of  the  week,  called  Saturday,  as  holy  time,  &c. 

The  penalty  for  each  offence  is  one  dollar  in  the  case  of 
persons  over  fourteen  years  of  age. 

The  selling  of  goods,  fruits,  herbs,  &c.,  on  Sunday, 
except  meats,  milk,  and  fish,  before  nine  o'clock,  is  forbid- 
den. Articles  exposed  for  sale  on  that  day  are  forfeited 
for  the  use  of  the  poor,  &c. 

No  keeper  of  any  inn  or  tavern,  or  of  any  ale  or  porter 
house,  or  grocery,  or  any  person  authorized  to  retail  strong 
or  spirituous  drinks,  shall  on  Sunday  sell  or  dispose  of  any 
ale,  porter,  strong  or  spirituous  drinks,  except  to  lodgers 
or  persons  legally  travelling  on  that  day  by  law,  under 
penalty  of  two  dollars  and  a  half  for  each  offence. 

A  law  of  special  application  to  the  city  of  New  York, 
passed  in  i860,  forbids  various  kinds  of  exhibitions  on 
Sunday,  under  heavy  penalties. 

A  law  passed  in  1872  forbids  processions  on  Sunday, 
except  funeral  processions  and  such  as  go  from  churches 
in  connection  with  religious  services  there,  on  penalty  of 
twenty  dollars. 

These  laws,  which  seek  to  secure  the  quiet  and  rest  of 
the  Lord's  Day,  do  not  aim  at  regulating  the  conduct  of 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     28 1 

individuals  within  their  own  premises,  or  at  enforcing  in 
any  direct  way  the  observance  of  the  day  for  the  pur- 
poses of  worship.  The  inquiry,  however,  naturally  arises, 
whether  even  this  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  liberty  of 
individuals  ;  and  this  inquiry  runs  back  to  a  more  general 
one, — whether  any  restraint  whatever  on  the  outward 
action  of  the  individual,  on  the  Lord's  Day,  can  be  com- 
patible with  the  true  idea  of  the  limits  of  public  power. 

1.  We  must  answer,  first,  by  saying  that  legislation  is 
not  confined  within  the  sphere  of  outward  and  material 
good.  The  ideal  good  is  as  much  to  be  protected  by  the 
laws  of  society  as  the  good  of  the  body  and  the  temporal 
possessions.  Otherwise  all  that  department  of  law  which 
relates  to  education,  to  the  prevention  of  certain  immoral 
habits,  such  as  obscene  exposure  of  the  person,  to  cruelty 
towards  animals,  to  blasphemy,  could  not  be  defended. 
The  conception  of  man  as  a  moral,  intellectual,  aesthetical, 
and  religious  being,  has  something  to  do  with  the  conduct 
of  his  fellows  towards  him  or  his  towards  them,  and  may 
call  for  the  protection  of  this  part  of  his  nature,  just  as 
the  sensual  and  outward  part  of  his  nature  calls  for  his 
protection  in  other  respects. 

2.  In  the  second  place,  we  remark  that  the  state's  func- 
tion in  its  laws  and  penalties  has  three  sides  to  it :  it  may 
require  something  to  be  done  by  the  individual ;  or  pre- 
vent him  by  penalty  from  doing  —  that  is,  prohibit  him 
from  doing  —  certain  things;  or,  again,  it  may,  without 
directly  coming  into  contact  with  the  individual,  perform 
certain  actions  of  its  own. 

In  regard  to  moral  and  religious  actions,  the  state's  prov- 
ince of  requiring  individuals  to  perform  certain  actions 
is  exceedingly  small.  No  positive  action  is  required  of  a 
person  as  to  the  observance  of  the  Lord's  Day  by  the  laws 
of  the  States  which  have  been  read.  And  such  commands 
as  that  of  attending  church,  or  not  walking  abroad,  or  ab- 


282  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS, 

staining  from  certain  employments,  provided  they  do  not 
affect  or  involve  the  conduct  of  other  individuals,  do  not 
now  appear  on  the  statute-books. 

3.  Prohibitory  legislation,  or  that  which  forbids  certain 
acts,  is  a  restraint  on  personal  freedom  ;  and  there  is  no 
use  in  restraint  per  se.  Hence  the  inquiry  always  is, 
whether  there  is  sufficient  good  to  be  gained  to  justify 
the  prohibition.  Laws  concerning  conduct  on  the  sab- 
bath are  not  peculiar  in  this  respect.  If  a  man  is  forbid- 
den to  walk  on  the  green  turf  of  a  public  park,  or  to  walk 
across  a  bed  in  a  public  garden,  the  reason  is  that  the 
state  or  municipality  has  a  right  to  maintain  such  park  or 
garden,  and  the  conduct  of  the  man  tends  to  injure  cause- 
lessly what  the  public  authority  has  a  right  to  preserve 
from  injury.  If  an  obscene  exposure  of  the  person  in  a 
public  place  is  prohibited,  the  reason  is  that  the  act  is  at 
once  causeless  and  wrong.  Some  might  state  the  reason 
of  the  prohibition  to  be,  that  it  is  revolting  to  the  taste 
and  moral  sense  of  men.  I  would  not  quarrel  in  this  case 
about  the  exact  reason  for  the  prohibition,  and  will  only 
say  here  that  an  action  so  entirely  revolting  to  the 
moral  sense  is  a  wrong  action,  and  would  not  be  revolt- 
ing unless  it  were  wrong.  Again,  cruelty  to  animals  is 
prohibited  because  it  is  inhumane,  not  because  it  makes 
a  man  feel  badly  who  sees  it.  He  feels  badly  because  it 
•is  inhumane,  and  therefore  wrong. 

These  examples,  which  might  be  multiplied,  show  that 
prohibitory  laws  do  not  all  rest  on  just  the  same  grounds ; 
and  the  actions  forbidden  are  not  all  of  the  same  kind. 
There  may  be  in  some  cases  several  reasons  for  the  same 
prohibition.  Thus  laws  relating  to  dram-shops  are  justi- 
fied by  the  harm  done  to  individuals,  by  the  evils,  such  as 
poverty  and  crime,  entailed  on  society,  and,  it  may  be,  by 
the  injury  inflicted  on  families  by  such  resorts. 

4.  There  may  be,  then,  and  there  are,  various  reasons 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     283 

for  laws  touching  the  observance  of  the  Lord's  Day,  or  the 
day  of  rest.  But  is  there  any  need  of  such  laws  in  the 
statute-book  ?  Christ  says  the  sabbath  was  made  for  man. 
And,  in  consistency  with  this  declaration  of  our  Lord,  it 
would  seem  that  the  benefits  of  the  day  for  man  are  the 
comprehensive  reason  why  the  day  should  be  protected 
by  legislation.  This  reason  implies,  that  if  a  considerable 
part  of  the  people  of  a  state  acknowledge  the  truth  of  the 
Christian  religion,  and  actually  observe  the  Lord's  Day,  it 
ought  so  far  to  be  protected  by  law  that  its  benefits  should 
not  be  lost. 

And  here  I  observe,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  habits, 
or  rather  the  fixed  habits,  of  a  people,  as  long  as  they  are 
not   deleterious  to  social   order,  have  a  right   to  demand 
protection   for  themselves  from    the  state  by  appropriate 
laws.     If  Chinamen  have  a  right  — as  they  have' by  treaty 
—  to  come  into  this  country,  they  have  a  right  to  come 
and  stay  with  their  cues  on,  just  as  our  fathers  had  a  right 
to  their  cues  and  wigs.     So,  if  a  man  or  his  wife  give  a 
party,  there  is  no  right  of  assemblage  and  noisy  disturb- 
ance before  his  door.     The  oflfice  of  preserving  public  order 
extends    to  every  thing   in   the  nature  of   an  institution, 
whether  set  up  by  the  state  or  voluntary,  unless  it  is  hurt- 
ful   to    public    interests    or   injures    some   private   rights. 
This  principle  is  more  wide-sweeping   than    that    similar 
political  one,  that  the  people  or  portions  of  it  have  a  right 
to  assemble  to  discuss  their  grievances,  and  present  peti- 
tions to  the  government.     The  right  of  peaceable  gather- 
ings   for   religious    worship    is    a   most   important    right, 
because  it  is  essential  to  such  worship.     Whether  a  man 
believes  in  any  thing  but  cellular  development,  or  not,  let 
him  be  an  Agnostic  in  regard  to  all  invisible  things,  he 
must  still  admit   that   the  mass  of   men  do   believe  that 
public  worship  is  of  immense  importance ;  and  that  they 
must  be  protected  in  this  right,  if  any  one  is  to  be  pro- 


284  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

tected  in  any  rights.  But  the  hmit  here,  —  for  there  must 
be  limits  to  all  rights,  —  implying  that  men  gather  to- 
gether, cannot  be  found  in  the  truth  which  is  taught ;  for 
the  nation  or  its  officers  cannot  teach  mere  opinion,  but 
only  in  the  orderly  and  moral  conduct  of  the  persons 
assembled,  and  in  the  fact  that  the  object  of  the  meeting 
is  not  to  do,  or  incite  others  to  do,  direct  injury  to  individ- 
uals or  to  the  Commonwealth. 

Second,  If  persons  ought  to  be  protected  in  their  reli- 
gious gatherings  on  the  Lord's  Day,  it  is  necessary  that 
they  should  have  buildings  for  the  purposes  of  worship, 
which  they  may  own,  or  at  least  control,  for  the  time 
being.  This  is  a  power,  or  right,  which  every  corpora- 
tion for  every  legitimate  purpose,  every  club  and  asso- 
ciation, may  exercise ;  and  the  only  question  is,  whether 
the  privilege,  now  conceded  to  a  great  extent,  of  exemp- 
tion from  taxes  on  houses  of  religious  worship,  should 
be  granted ;  or,  at  least,  whether  church-buildings,  put  up 
at  a  certain  moderate  cost,  should  be  so  exempted.  If 
this  is  granted,  the  grant  must  rest  on  the  conviction  of 
the  importance  of  public  worship,  upon  a  day  of  rest  from 
labor,  to  all  the  highest  earthly  interests  of  the  community. 
The  interests,  in  fact,  of  all  the  members  of  society  depend 
on  stated  outward  days  of  worship,  more,  even,  than  on 
schools  and  places  of  refuge  for  the  poor;  and,  until  a 
large  portion  of  society  becomes  hostile  to  Christianity, 
this  will  be  generally  admitted. 

Third,  A  more  difficult  question  arises  touching  public 
sports,  travelling  for  unnecessary  purposes,  opening  shops 
and  exposing  articles  for  sale ;  in  fact,  touching  all  laws 
by  which  a  distinction  is  made,  in  regard  to  outward  acts, 
in  any  way,  between  the  Lord's  Day  and  the  other  six 
days  of  the  week.  Here  several  considerations  present 
themselves,  to  which  we  devote  a  few  very  brief  remarks. 

A  day  of  rest  from  labor  is  invaluable  for  all  who  are 


THE  SABBA  TH  IN  THE  STA  TE  AND  SOCIETY.     285 

occupied  in  bodily  labor  through  the  week.     In  a  farming 
community,  perhaps,  the  mere  rest  from  toil  on  one  day  is 
not  so  important  as  it  is  for  operatives ;  and,  again,  those 
who  carry  on  their  own  business  of  producing  that  which 
they  sell  by  their  own  bargains,  can,  to  some  extent,  com- 
mand their  time,  and  rest  when  they  are  weary.     But  all 
operatives,  clerks,  domestic  servants,  persons  engaged  by 
others    in    transportation,  and,  we    may  add,  child^l-en  in 
schools,  older  students,  and  professional  men,  need  such 
rest  as  the  Lord's  Day  affords.     It  is  admitted  to  be  emi- 
nently a  humane  institution.^     To  a  humane  person,  it  is 
a  joy  that  beasts  of  burden  and  transport  share  in  man's 
weekly  rest.     If  there  is  a  public  habit  of  rest,  the  busi- 
ness of  the  world  is  not  affected ;  nay,  it  is  probable  that 
as  much  work  is  done  in  six  days  as  would  be  done  in 
seven.     It  is  for  the  health  of  man.     A  day  of  religious 
rest  is  again  eminently  a  social  institution.     By  bringing 
men  together  in  worship,  it  unites  society,  opening^'the 
hearts  of  the  community  to  the  noblest  truths,  and  helping 
them  to  resist  the  influences  of  mere  earthly  occupation. 
A  day  of  common  rest  may  thus  be  a  blessing  to  man  and 
beast,  to  all  whose  vocation  calls  to  bodily  or  mental  labor, 
to  the  bodily  and  to  the  spiritual  natures.     But  a  day  of 
common  rest  cannot  well  arise,  except  for  religious  pur- 

1  Bismarck  who  is  not  at  all  strict  in  his  views  on  the  observance  of  Sunday 
expresses  himself  thus  in  Dr.  Busch's  book  (1,222  American  ed.  of  transl.) :  _ 

"  I,  too,  am  not  at  all  against  observances  of  the  Sunday  :  on  the  contrary  I  do  all 
I  can,  as  a  landed  proprietor,  to  promote  it ;  only  I  will  not  at  all  have  people  con- 
stramed  On  Sunday,  no  work  should  be  done,  not  so  much  because  it  is  against  the 
commandment  of  God,  as  on  man's  account,  who  needs  repose.  This,  of  course,  does 
not  apply  to  the  service  of  the  state,  especially  not  to  the  diplomatic  service:  for  de- 
spatches and  telegrams  arrive  on  Sunday,  which  must  be  attended  to.  Nor  is  any  thin? 
to  be  said  agamst  our  peasants  bringing  in  their  hay  or  corn  on  a  Sunday,  in  the  har- 
vest after  long  rain,  when  fine  weather  begins  on  a  Saturday.  I  could  not  find  it  in 
my  heart  to  forbid  this  to  tenants  in  the  contract;  although  I  should  not  do  it  my- 
self, bcmg  able  to  bear  the  possible  damage  of  a  rainy  Monday.  It  is  thought  by 
our  proprietors  rather  improper  to  let  their  people  work  on  Sunday,  even  in  case  of 
necessity," 


286  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

poses.  Man  may  have  occasional  and  irregular  festivals, 
or  holidays,  in  a  land  of  atheists ;  but  religion  gave  us  and 
keeps  up  for  us  the  Lord's  Day.  It  thus,  in  all  Christian 
lands,  forms  the  habits  of  the  community. 

Now,  a  habit  so  important  and  universal  cannot  exist 
without  having  some  relations  to  law ;  and  the  legislator 
who  deserves  the  name,  one  who  feels  the  necessity  of 
supporting  all  civil  interests  on  a  basis  of  morality  and 
religion,  and  who  discerns  the  intense  morality  of  the 
Christian  religion,  will  be  most  ready  to  protect  the  Lord's 
Day  on  account  of  its  use,  because  **it  was  made  for  man." 

Let  us  now  look  at  some  of  the  ways  in  which  the 
Lord's  Day  is  protected  by  law.  One  is  the  protection 
of  the  laborer  against  his  employer.  Men  are  now  agreed 
that  the  state  may  be  required  to  regulate  the  daily  num- 
ber of  hours'  work  in  a  factory,  especially  for  women  and 
children  ;  and  the  law,  in  Connecticut,  provides  not  only 
against  overworking  young  children,  but  against  using 
up  all  their  school-time  in  manual  employments.  The 
necessity  of  law  in  such  cases  arises  from  the  fact  that  in 
contracts  for  labor  one  party,  the  employer,  has  an  advan- 
tage over  the  other.  If  the  laborers  wear  out  through 
excess  of  toil,  and  are  incapacitated  for  work,  the  employer 
has  had  so  much  the  more  profit  from  them,  provided  he 
pays  them  by  day's  work  ;  and  then  society,  acting  on 
humane  principles  which  are  above  the  doctrine  of  rights 
and  obligations,  must  help  them  to  live.  For  two  reasons, 
then,  such  cases  may  be  noticed  by  law,  —  for  the  sake  of 
the  laborer  and  for  the  sake  of  the  community. 

And  again,  within  certain  limits,  all  those  demands  on 
men's  time,  which  require  particular  persons  to  use  up 
the  day  of  rest  in  serving  the  mere  pleasure  or  the  pecu- 
niary interests  of  others,  may  come  under  the  regulation 
of  law.  Such  cases  would  be  free  travelling  on  rail  or 
other  roads  ;  free  use  of  hired  carriages,  requiring  host- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     28/ 


lers  to  do  more  than  supply  food  to  horses  (which  is  an 
act  of  humanity) ;  the  employment  of  men  in  pleasure- 
excursions  on  the  Lord's  Day ;  every  kind  of  work  which 
without  necessity  takes  away  from  men  the  possibility  of 
rest  or  of  worship.  For  the  protection  of  such  persons, 
as  well  as  for  the  general  good  derived  from  worship  and 
the  inculcation  of  Christian  truth,  laws  like  those  in  the 
statute-books,  which  have  been  read,  are  entirely  justifia- 
ble ;  nay,  they  are  needed,  because  without  such  props  the 
character  of  society  would  become  worse.  Such  laws  are, 
in  fact,  a  protection  of  outward  religious  and  moral  habits, 
and  society  is  paid  for  them  by  the  defence  of  all  civil 
order  and  civil  institutions  which  religion  and  morality 
afford.  In  fact,  an  unbeliever  in  revelation,  who  felt  the 
importance  of  cherishing  the  moral  and  religious  convic- 
tions for  the  maintenance  of  public  order  and  safety, 
might  be  rationally  in  favor  of  protecting  the  Lord's  Day 
by  institutions  and  laws,  although  he  drew  no  benefits 
from  it  himself. 

Another  description  of  laws  which  will  meet  with  gen- 
eral commendation  are  those  which  forbid,  under  penal- 
ties, the  opening  of  gambling  and  drinking  houses  on  the 
Lord's  Day.  A  day  even  of  religious  rest  may  have  its 
temptations  for  those  who  will  not  spend  it  for  the  pur- 
poses contained  in  its  original  institution.  The  tired  la- 
borer may  welcome  the  suspension  of  work,  but  may  use 
the  day  in  criminal  self-indulgence,  ruinous  to  him  and 
his  family.  Thus  for  the  workingmen,  especially  in  large 
towns,  severer  laws  are  needed  on  Sunday,  in  regard  to 
gambling  and  drinking,  than  in  the  rest  of  the  week. 

Suppose,  now,  such  a  general  spirit  of  unbelief  to  pre- 
vail as  would  render  all  Sunday-laws  obsolete,  if  not 
repeal  them  altogether :  Christianity  would  by  no  means 
lose  its  day  of  rest,  but  a  state  of  things  would  ensue, 
much  worse  for  society  than  the  severest  sabbath  code 


288  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

that  ever  was  enacted.  In  such  a  state  of  things  Chris- 
tians would  be  forced  into  closer  unions  than  now  exist. 
They  would  form  societies  within  society.  As  they  would 
have  no  laws  to  support  their  institutions,  they  would 
combine  the  more  easily  to  protect  themselves.  If,  for 
instance,  the  unbelieving  part  of  society  bought  and  sold, 
drank  and  gambled,  on  Sunday,  they  would  undoubtedly 
deal  with  no  such  traders,  but  would  draw  all  their  supplies 
from  men  within  their  own  communities.  That  this  would 
promote  hypocrisy  and  hatred,  is  very  likely ;  but  it  would 
be  the  inevitable  result  of  the  new  state  of  things,  unless 
the  Christians  should  dwindle  into  an  insignificant  sect, 
or  by  the  putting  of  their  life  and  character  to  the  test 
it  would  enable  them  to  recover  their  old  place  in  society. 

We  will  recapitulate  what  we  have  to  say  on  Sunday- 
laws  in  a  few  formal  statements  :  — 

First,  Religion  being  the  highest  interest  of  man,  and 
the  Christian  religion  bringing  with  it  social  institutions, 
it  is  impossible  for  civil  law  to  ignore  them  and  pass  them 
by  on  the  other  side. 

Second,  A  weekly  day  of  rest  and  worship  is  essentially 
connected  with  social  gatherings  of  Christians,  with  an 
intelligent  and  efficient  ministry,  and  with  the  mainte- 
nance of  religion  in  the  world.  So  far  as  the  rights  of 
social  public  worship  are  concerned,  the  gatherings,  the 
house,  the  day  necessary  for  this  purpose,  must  be  re- 
spected and  protected  by  law.  This  must  and  will  be 
done,  until  society  shall  come  to  believe  that  religion  rests 
on  no  real  truth  concerning  God  and  man,  and  that  it  is 
hurtful  to  society. 

Third,  For  its  own  sake  as  well  as  because  it  is  a  guard- 
ian of  habits  and  institutions  in  which  a  large  part  of 
the  community  share,  the  state  may  make  laws  such  that 
worship  be  not  disturbed  ;  and,  if  a  day  of  rest  be  one  of 
those  habits,  the  State  must  see  to  it  that  rest  itself  be  not 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     289 

made  a  curse  instead  of  a  blessing  by  the  opening  on  that 
day  of  sources  of  dissipation. 

Fourth,  The  compulsory  closing  of  shops,  and  forbid- 
ding of  travel  and  transport  for  business  purposes  on  the 
Lord's  Day,  goes  still  further.  Such  prohibitions  are  de- 
fensible on  the  ground  that  a  day  of  rest  is  an  institution 
full  of  benevolence,  of  moral  and  religious  good  for  clerks, 
servants,  and  all  persons  employed  in  labor,  sale,  or  trans- 
portation. A  day  of  rest,  on  which  the  spiritual  interests 
of  man  can  be  attended  to,  is  necessary,  as  we  believe, 
for  the  morals  and  uprightness  of  character  of  all  persons 
who  labor  through  the  week,  as  well  as  for  their  health 
and  social  respectability.  Society,  dreading  the  evil-  to  its 
own  best  interests,  and  especially  to  the  classes  that  are 
burdened  by  the  week's  manual  labor,  gives  them  an  op- 
portunity to  recruit  themselves  on  Sunday,  both  by  rest 
and  by  change  of  thoughts  and  interests. 

Fifth,  It  is  not  true  that  Sunday-laws,  as  we  have  de- 
fended them,  contain  any  residuum  of  a  connection  be- 
tween Church  and  State.  They  provide  only  for  the  rest 
from  labor  of  manual  workers  on  one  and  the  same  day ; 
but  demand  nothing  in  the  shape  of  worship,  nor  even  of 
rest,  so  far  as  it  is  not  public  or  preventive  of  the  rest 
of  others.  If  a  state  where  the  mass  of  men  believe  in  the 
importance  of  religion,  and  of  a  day  of  rest  for  religious 
and  other  purposes,  cannot  do  as  much  as  has  been  laid 
down,  its  sphere  of  action  must  be  limited  indeed.  We 
should  have  to  go  much  farther  than  the  abandonment  of 
all  Sunday-laws,  in  a  backward  legislation  founded  on 
such  an  idea  as  this. 

Sixth,  Individuals  must  be  left  aside  from  Sunday  legis- 
lation, so  far  as  they  do  not  prevent  others  from  receiving 
the  advantages  of  a  day  of  rest.  The  old  English  fines 
for  non-attendance  at  the  parish  church,  and  every  thing 
like  them,  have  disappeared  from  the  world.     But  history 


290  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

shows  that  the  nations  which  have  been  strict  without 
narrowness  in  the  observance  of  Sunday  have  had  the 
purest  morals,  and  have  clung  to  their  faith  in  times  of 
religious  decay  ;  so  that,  if  they  had  faults  and  follies  in 
their  severe  codes  which  tended  to  bring  back  a  Jewish 
sabbath,  they  were  yet,  on  the  whole,  right  in  protecting 
the  Lord's  Day  by  legislation. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     29I 


THE   SABBATH   AND   FREE   INSTITUTIONS. 

BY  REV.    PRESIDENT   E.    G.   ROBmSON,    D.D. 

The  word  ^'sabbath  "  will  be  used  in  this  paper  in  the 
sense  of  the  Christian  Sunday,  and  without  any  reference 
whatever  to  the  question  of  the  relation  of  the  day  to  the 
Jewish  sabbath. 

By  free  institutions  will  be  meant  a  free  government 
and  all  the  institutions,  civil  and  religious,  which  a  free 
government  either  directly  establishes,  or  simply  fosters 
and  protects.  And  by  a  free  government  will  be  meant  a 
government  which  is  not  only  dependent  on  the  will  of 
the  governed  for  its  existence,  but  which  secures  to  every 
one  who  is  subject  to  it  his  personal  liberty  and  all  his 
personal  rights.  Governments  are  not  necessarily  free 
because  democratic  in  their  origin,  nor  because  republican 
in  form.  Democracies  can  trample  on  individual  rights : 
they  have  often  proved  most  arbitrary  and  tyrannical.  A 
government,  in  order  to  be  free,  must  not  only  derive  its 
authority  from  the  will  of  the  governed,  but  that  will  must 
be  so  enlightened,  and  so  controlled  by  its  enlightenment, 
as  to  insure  the  enactment  and  enforcement  of  equal  and 
just  laws  for  all.  A  government  of  the  people,  for  the 
people,  by  the  people,  will  be  a  free  government  only  and 
always  in  exact  proportion  to  the  intellectual  and  moral 
enlightenment  of  the  people. 

Now,  in  respect  to  the  relation  of  the  Christian  sabbath 
to  free  institutions  as  we  have  defined  them,  it  is  first  of 
all  to  be  remembered,  that  the  institutions  of  our  own 
country  clearly  had  their  origin  in  the  Christian  Sun- 
day, and  the  uses  that  were  made  of  it.     There  had  been 


292  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

democracies  and  republics  before  our  own,  which  had 
known  no  sabbath.  But  they  were  republics  in  which  the 
sacredness  of  the  rights  of  the  individual  was  not  recog- 
nized and  protected  by  fundamental  law.  It  is  the  glory 
of  our  land  and  its  institutions,  that  before  the  law  every 
man  is  the  equal  of  every  other.  And  for  this  we  are  in- 
debted to  the  Christian  sabbath,  —  not  as  a  day  of  mere 
rest,  but  as  a  day  devoted  to  worship  and  to  religious 
instruction.  Before  the  Reformation  in  England,  it  was 
little  that  Englishmen  knew  of  personal  rights  and  per- 
sonal freedom,  and  still  less  of  a  sabbath  in  which  Chris- 
tian truth  was  unfolded  to  them  in  its  fulness.  To  estab- 
lish the  sabbath  as  a  day  of  public  religious  teaching,  was 
one  of  the  first  steps  of  the  first  reformers  in  England. 
To  accomplish  this  end,  they  wrote  catechisms ;  they 
preached ;  they  procured  Acts  of  Parliament ;  they  left 
no  legitimate  means  untried.  With  Luther  and  Calvin, 
in  their  ideas  of  Sunday,  the  first  English  and  Scotch 
reformers  were  utterly  at  variance.  They  held  it  to  be  a 
day  in  which  the  people  should  be  publicly  taught  as  well 
as  prompted  to  worship.  Out  of  the  sabbath-teaching 
begun  by  the  first  English  reformers  sprung  the  com- 
monwealth of  England  ;  and  out  of  the  sabbath  which 
gave  the  commonwealth  to  England  sprung  the  free  in- 
stitutions of  America. 

What  the  Christian  use  of  Sunday  has  originated,  it  can 
help  to  conserve.  Let  us  glance  briefly  at  two  or  three 
of  the  ways  in  which  this  conservative,  influence  may  be 
exerted. 

First,  As  a  day  of  mere  bodily  rest  it  is  useful.  To 
observe  it  even  as  a  day  of  compulsory  cessation  from 
labor,  and  from  whatever  disturbs  the  public  quiet,  is  both 
politically  and  morally  wholesome.  To  observe  it  even  in 
obedience  to  the  State,  as  a  day  of  public  worship,  pro- 
motes the  public   tranquillity,  and   so  contributes  to  the 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     293 

Stability  of  the  government  and  of  all  that  government 
protects.  The  Christian  Sunday  with  any  kind  of  reli- 
gious observance  of  it,  and  even  with  an  observance  of 
only  a  few  of  its  hours,  cannot  fail  to  help  in  conserving 
all  that  is  politically  and  socially  dear  to  us.  A  worship 
that  should  be  only  ritual,  that  should  address  simply- the 
aesthetic  taste,  and  never  a  word  to  the  intellect  or  the 
heart,  would  be  infinitely  better  than  no  worship,  and 
would  contribute  its  proportion  to  the  preservation  of  all 
that  is  sacred  and  good.  To  recognize  God  at  all,  and 
especially  to  reverence  him  in  some  kind  of  worship  under 
the  authority  and  protection  of  the  State,  teaches  rever- 
ence for  law,  and  fosters  a  love  for  the  order  and  security 
and  peace  which  obedience  to  law  alone  can  secure. 

Secojtd,  Again,  a  right  and  Christian  use  of  Sunday  will 
conserve  free  institutions  by  giving  to  men  right  ideas  of 
freedom.  The  most  perfectly  free  institutions,  including 
free  governments,  which  can  exist  among  men,  are  those 
in  which  every  individual  citizen  fulfils  all  his  obligations 
to  every  other  citizen,  and  each  respects  the  rights  of  all. 
The  most  perfect  freedom  that  any  nation  can  know  is 
that  in  which  all  the  laws,  formulating  the  eternal  princi- 
ples of  right  and  wrong,  are  spontaneously  and  punctilious- 
ly obeyed  by  all.  The  highest  conceivable  freedom  will 
always  be  coincident  with  the  strictest  obedience  to  law. 
The  freest  people  will  always  be  the  most  law-abiding.  / 
And  where  among  all  the  sources  of  knowledge  open  to 
man  will  you  find  so  simple,  so  lucid,  and  so  complete  a 
statement  of  the  immutable  principles  of  right  and  wrong 
for  the  individual,  and  of  justice  and  equity  for  the  state,  V^ 
as  in  our  sacred  Scriptures }  And  where  among  men 
have  these  principles  been  enunciated  with  more  distinct- 
ness, or  urged  on  the  attention  of  men  with  more  cogent 
reasoning  or  with  more  impressive  and  persuasive  elo- 
quence, than  in  the  Protestant  pulpits  and  on  the  Chris- 


294  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS.      . 

tian  sabbaths  of  the  past  three  centuries  ?  And  where 
among  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  have  free  institutions 
been  so  firmly  established,  or  so  beneficent  in  their  influ- 
ence, as  among  the  peoples  where  Protestant  pulpits  on 
Christian  Sundays  have  proclaimed  and  enforced  the 
duties  and  the  ris^hts  of  men  ? 

Third,  Again,  thirdly,  the  Christian  sabbath,  rightly 
used,  conserves  free  institutions  by  giving  to  men  a  just 
appreciation  of  their  rights  ;  and  it  does  this  by  constant- 
ly reminding  them  of  their  duties.  The  rights  of  man, 
in  defence  of  which,  real  or  imaginary,  life  has  been  so 
freely  sacrificed,  kingdoms  convulsed,  and  governments 
overthrown,  can  be  rationally  explained  and  intelligently 
maintained  only  as  the  duties  of  man  are  clearly  under- 
stood and  accepted.  Man  has  rights  only  as  he  has  duties. 
Every  right  grounds  itself  in  an  inexorable  duty.  The 
theory  which  grounds  rights  in  personality  mistakes  by 
regarding  personality  as  its  own  end.  The  truth  is,  that 
to  be  a  man  is  to  exist  after  a  given  type.  Personality 
exists  only  as  the  embodiment  of  an  ideal  being  ;  and  to 
realize  that  ideal  in  accordance  with  the  will  of  God,  is  the 
highest  end  of  man.  To  realize  the  typical  ideal  of  man- 
hood, just  so  far  as  may  lie  within  his  power,  is  the  one 
all-inclusive  and  inexorable  duty  of  every  human  existence. 
To  whatever  is  necessary  to  the  realization  of  that  ideal, 
every  man  has  a  God-given  and  inalienable  right.  The 
clearest  perception  of  rights,  therefore,  and  the  most  in- 
domitable will  in  maintaining  them,  will  ever  be  his  who 
perceives  most  clearly  and  feels  most  keenly  the  duties 
from  which  he  cannot  escape. 

He,  accordingly,  who  points  out  to  men  most  plainly 
their  duties,  not  only  gives  them  the  most  just  apprecia- 
tion of  their  own  rights,  but  also  a  regard  for  the  rights 
of  others.  To  listen  to  the  unappeasable  demands  of  duty, 
and  to  perceive  clearly  our  right  to  whatever  we  may  need 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     295 

in  doing  our  duty,  is  to  take  the  first  step  towards  appre- 
ciation of  the  sacredness  of  the  rights  of  the  race.  But 
to  remind  man  of  his  duties  aUke  to  God,  to  himself,  and 
to  his  fellow-men,  and  to  give  him  time  to  reflect  on  them, 
were  the  chief  ends  for  which  the  sabbath  was  instituted, 
and  for  which  its  observance  should  be  perpetuated.  And 
to  explain  and  to  urge  on  the  consciences  of  men  their 
duties,  is  unquestionably  one  of  the  highest  uses  to  which 
the  day  can  be  devoted. 

Fourth,  Again,  our  Christian  Sunday  helps  to  keep  man 
in  mind  of  the  complication  of  his  rights  with  the  rights 
of  other  people.  The  rights  of  man  are  manifold  and 
complex,  but  the  just  rights  of  no  one  will  conflict  with 
the  just  rights  of  another.  The  supposed  rights  of  one 
may  conflict  with  the  supposed  rights  of  another.  It  is 
the  business  of  government  to  decide  between  them,  and 
to  decide  what  is  just.  This  prerogative  every  govern- 
ment entitled  to  be  called  a  government,  whether  tyran- 
nical or  free,  assumes  and  exercises.  And  any  assumed 
right  of  one,  which  invades  the  recognized  right  of  an- 
other, is  dealt  with  as  a  crime.  Even  personal  vices  which 
are  clearly  seen  to  be  the  results  of  crimes  are  treated  as 
punishable  offences  against  the  common  rights  of  all. 

Of  this  complication  of  the  rights  of  the  individual  with 
the  rights  of  society,  it  is  one  of  the  chief  functions  of  the 
Christian  sabbath  to  keep  men  constantly  in  mind.  It 
does  this  by  giving  them  opportunity  to  reflect  on  ques- 
tions of  duty  which,  without  a  day  of  rest  and  reflection, 
might  be  left  unsettled  and  in  confusion  ;  and,  more  than 
all,  it  enables  them  to  hear  the  great  principles  of  religion 
and  morality  so  stated  and  discussed,  and  so  yoked  to- 
gether in  harmony,  that  what  seemed  obscure  and  contra- 
dictory is  made  plain  and  accordant.  **  The  speediest 
courser  on  the  road  to  despotism  is  a  principle  ridden 
without  reins,"  says  a  philosophical  German  in  a  recent 


296  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

work  on  the  constitutional  and  political  history  of  the 
United  States.  To  save  from  this  abuse  of  single  and 
isolated  principles,  is  one  of  the  great  offices  which  our 
Christian  sabbath  is  capable  of  doing  for  our  American 
population,  and  so  for  the  perpetuation  of  all  that  is  dear 
to  us  in  our  political  and  religious  institutions. 

Now,  in  what  we  have  thus  said,  it  is  of  course  taken 
for  granted  that  the  sabbath  shall  be  properly  used.  The 
day  will  be  serviceable  in  conserving  free  institutions  in 
proportion  as  it  is  intelligently  used.  An  intelligent  use 
will  also  accord  with  scriptural  example.  Whatever  our 
theory  of  the  origin  of  the  Jewish  sabbath,  or  of  the  rela- 
tion of  the  Christian  to  the  Jewish,  both  Testaments  of 
our  Scriptures  may  justly  teach  us  as  to  a  rational  use 
of  the  day. 

Just  how  the  earliest  Jews  observed  their  day,  beyond 
mere  cessation  from  labor,  is  not  altogether  apparent. 
During  the  times  of  the  prophets,  especially  the  earliest 
of  them,  there  are  reasons  for  believing  that  the  people 
resorted  to  them  on  that  day  for  instruction.  After  the 
Babylonian  captivity,  and  the  institution  of  synagogues, 
the  people,  we  know,  were  accustomed  to  resort  to  these 
on  the  sabbath,  to  hear  their  sacred  Scriptures  read  and 
expounded.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  the 
Jews,  we  know,  were  accustomed  to  resort  to  their  syna- 
gogues on  the  sabbath,  not  only  for  worship,  and  to  hear 
the  Scriptures  read,  but  to  hear  the  teachings  of  the 
Scriptures  enforced  by  any  competent  expounders  who 
might  chance  to  be  present.  Out  of  this  Jewish  use  of 
the  day,  sprung  undoubtedly  the  earliest  and  true  Chris- 
tian use  of  the  Christian's  Sunday. 

An  intelligent  and  rational  use  of  the  day  in  our  time 
is,  we  think,  just  this  primitive  Christian  use,  so  far  modi- 
fied as  the  growth  in  religious  knowledge,  and  the  natu- 
ral d'evelopment  of  Christianity  and  of  the  Christian  life, 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     297 

have  clearly  made  necessary.  But  the  day  is  not  intelli- 
gently used  when  merely  devoted  to  the  observances  of  a 
ritual  which  appeals  to  the  aesthetic  and  emotional  parts 
of  our  nature,  but  enforces  neither  duty  nor  doctrine. 
This  is  to  restore  the  temple,  and  abolish  the  synagogue ; 
to  dismiss  the  apostles,  and  call  back  the  priests.  Nor  yet 
is  that  an  intelligent  or  a  scriptural  use  of  the  day,  which 
would  devote  it  exclusively  to  worship,  though  a  worship 
in  which  all  the  people  should  join  ;  or  which  should  make 
worship  so  to  preponderate  over  all  other  uses,  as  to  limit 
religious  instructions  to  mere  homilies  on  the  common- 
places of  religion.  If  we  be  told  that  the  worship  of 
God  is  the  one  use  to  which  all  others  should  be  subordi- 
nated, our  reply  is,  that,  granting  this  to  be  true,  the  ques- 
tions arise  :  Which  is  the  more  acceptable  to  God,  the 
worship  offered  in  blindness  and  without  reflection,  or  the 
worship  born  of  discernment  and  conviction  ?  Who  are 
the  people  who  will  worship  with  most  reverence  and 
devotion,  if  not  they  whose  hearts  have  been  moved 
through  enlightenment  of  their  intellects  }  Who  will  feel 
their  obligations,  if  not  they  who  under  intelligent  guid- 
ance have  sought  to  understand  them }  And  when,  if 
ever,  will  they  seek  or  be  able  to  understand  them,  if  not 
on  stated  days  set  apart  for  the  study  of  them,  and  the 
study  of  them  under  the  tuition  of  men  who  are  able  to 
teach } 

Nor  does  that  use  of  the  day  seem  any  more  rational 
which  aims  only  at  the  production  of  fervid  emotions  ; 
which  supposes  that  the  highest  use  of  the  day  is  to  be 
reached  in  the  delivery  of  an  emotional  sermon ;  wliich 
supposes  that  the  great  end  of  Sunday,  of  all  preaching, 
and  of  Christianity  itself,  is  attained  when  men  are  con- 
verted. Vital  as  is  the  doctrine  of  the  new  birth,  it  is  not 
the  only  great  doctrine  of  Christianity ;  nor  is  any  man 
the  more  lik^ely  to  be  made  sensible  of  his  need  of  a  new 


298  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

heart  by  perpetually  harping  upon  the  necessity  of  it. 
The  symmetry  of  character  into  which  it  is  the  aim  of 
Christianity  to  chisel  the  soul  of  man  is  wrought  by  use 
of  no  single  truth,  nor  of  any  single  group  of  truths,  but 
of  every  truth  that  has  come  to  us  from  above. 

But  there  is  a.  use  of  the  Christian  sabbath  supported 
alike  by  reason  and  by  Scripture.  It  is  that  use  which 
not  only  devotes  the  day  to  cessation  from  toil,  to  prayer 
and  praise,  to  the  study  of  the  word  of  God,  and  to  the 
moral  and  religious  instruction  of  the  young,  but  also  to  a 
public  proclamation  and  enforcement,  by  competent  and 
well-trained  teachers,  of  all  those  great  truths  which  con- 
stitute at  once  the  foundation  and  the  structure  of  the 
Christian  religion,  and  on  a  sure  recognition  of  which 
the  destiny  of  nations  as  well  as  of  individuals  must  always 
depend. 

The  function  of  the  Christian  pastor  of  to-day,  though 
essentially  one  with  that  of  the  early  heralds  of  the  gospel, 
yet  differs  from  it  in  many  a  broad  particular.  At  the 
beginning,  Jews  and  Gentiles  alike  needed  minute  and 
repeated  explanations  of  the  very  elements  of  Christian 
truth.  Now  Christianity  forms  a  part  of  the  very  civili- 
zation into  which  we  are  born.  Its  elementary  principles 
are  embodied  in  "the  first  lessons  of  our  childhood.  To-day 
the  evangelist,  the  lay  preacher,  and  the  Sunday-school 
teacher  relieve  the  pulpit  of  no  small  amount  of  its  work 
of  elementary  teaching ;  and  by  so  doing  they  lay  upon  it 
the  severer  task  of  dealing  with  subjects  more  difficult 
and  more  complicated,  but  none  the  less  necessary,  than 
any  which  the  early  heralds  of  the  gospel  were  called  on 
to  discuss.  The  thousand  agencies  now  at  work  among 
us  for  the  diffusion  of  religious  knowledge  have  lifted  up 
the  average  intelligence  of  the  people  to  a  level  where  the 
pulpit,  if  it  is  to  command  attention  and  to  control  the 
public  heart  and  will,  must  deal  in  something  else  than 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.    299 

commonplaces.  There  are  higher  regions  of  thought,  and 
higher  levels  of  Christian  activity  and  character,  than  the 
Church  has  yet  reached ;  and  up  to  these  levels  the  pulpit 
is  summoned  of  God  to  raise  the  people. 

And  so  again,  in  a  government  like  ours,  the  very  foun- 
dations of  which  rest  on  the  assumed  sacredness  of  the 
rights  of  the  individual,  and  the  stability  of  which  is  de- 
pendent on  an  abiding  consciousness  among  the  people  of 
individual  responsibilities,- — a  government  which,  though 
totally  separate  from  the  Church,  was  yet  the  direct  and 
natural  product  of  Christian  ideas,  —  it  is  evident  that  the 
pulpit  sustains  a  relation  to  the  national  life  such  as  was 
never  sustained  in  any  other  nation.  The  great  ethical 
and  theological  ideas  of  which  the  nation  was  born,  which 
this  generation  is  so  disposed  to  forget,  by  recurrence  to 
which  the  national  conscience  alone  can  be  quickened  and 
public  morals  be  purified  and  conserved,  need  to  be  enun- 
ciated and  enforced  as  never  before.  And  where  and  by 
whom  can  they  be  so  enunciated  and  enforced  as  to  reach 
the  public  conscience,  if  not  in  Christian  pulpits  and  on 
Christian  sabbaths  by  the  ministers  of  our  holy  religion } 
And  in  doing  this  there  need  be  no  preaching  of  politics, 
nor  of  any  thing  else  than  the  teachings  of  Christ  and  his 
apostles.  Nor  need  there  be  any  departure  from  the  models 
of  apostolic  preaching  farther  than  this  :  that  whereas 
the  apostles  preached  truths  which  vanquished  heathen- 
ism, and  overthrew  arbitrary  and  despotic  governments, 
we  would  so  preach  the  same  truths  as  not  only  to  save 
the  souls  of  men,  but  to  purify  and  perpetuate  all  that  the 
good  God  has  intrusted  to  us  of  civil  and  religious  liberty. 

To  accomplish  all  this,  it  will  not  be  denied  that  the 
pulpit  will  need  to  be  relieved  of  some  of  the  labor  which 
long-established  custom  has  imposed  on  it.  It  is  idle  to 
expect  from  it  two  sermons  a  Sunday  such  as  the  men  of 
this  generation  will  listen  to.     No  man  of  average  intellect 


300  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

and  attainments,  in  this  age  of  universal  religious  knowl- 
edge among  church-goers,  can  preach  for  a  long  series  of 
years  two  sermons  a  Sunday  which  are  worth  listening  to. 
Nor  is  it  the  function  of  the  pulpit  alone  to  press  home  on 
men  the  need  of  personal  regeneration  as  a  condition  to 
personal  salvation.  This  is  one  of  the  first  truths  of 
Christianity,  and  is  proclaimed  in  the  family,  in  the  Sun- 
day school,  by  lay  teaching  and  preaching  everywhere. 
The  higher  function  of  the  pulpit  now  is,  to  train  up  a 
sacramental  host  who  shall  everywhere,  by  the  fireside 
and  by  the  wayside,  in  the  schoolroom,  in  the  counting- 
house,  and  the  market-place,  reiterate  the  elementary 
truths  of  the  gospel  to  all  who  will  hear.  Let  the  pulpit 
teach  and  build  up  all  Christian  people  in  Christian 
knowledge  and  enduring  character,  and  they  will  daily  and 
hourly,  both  by  example  and  word,  press  home  as  the  pul- 
pit never  can,  on  the  unthinking  world,  its  need  of  a  prac- 
tical acquaintance  with  the  gospel  of  Christ.  Let  the 
pulpit  be  so  used  on  the  sabbath,  and  all  lay  teaching 
and  preaching  now  employed  be  continued,  and  there  will 
go  forth  from  the  sabbath  a  train  of  influences  which, 
reaching  the  heart  and  conscience  of  the  nation,  will  con- 
serve to  us  and  transmit  to  posterity  of  our  free  institu- 
tions all  that  is  sacred  and  worth  preserving. 

The  Christian  Church  to-day  provides  for  the  education 
of  her  clergy  as  never  before.  Whether  their  ministra- 
tions are  correspondingly  superior  to  those  of  all  their 
predecessors,  it  is  not  the  province  of  this  paper  to  inquire. 
But  the  opportunities  of  the  clergy  at  this  day  and  in  this 
country  have  been  exceeded  by  those  of  no  century  in 
our  era.  That  they  are  summoned  to  works  of  patience 
and  faith  by  voices  from  the  past,  the  present,  and  the 
future,  such  as  no  clergy  ever  before  heard,  no  one  who 
has  diligently  considered  the  past,  the  present,  and  the 
future,  can  fail  to  perceive. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.    301 

Passing  now  from  the  service  which  the  sabbath  is  capa- 
ble of  rendering  to  the  State,  let  us  ask  :  What  is  the  rela- 
tion of  the  State  to  the  sabbath  ?  What  should  be  its 
attitude  towards  it  ?  What  does  the  state  owe  it,  and 
what  can  a  free  government  render  it,  in  the  way  of  legis- 
lative i^rotection  and  authorization  ?  Let  us  see  what  the 
state  can  and  ought  to  do  for  the  Christian  sabbath. 

It  is  self-evident  that  the  only  permanent  foundation  of 
a  republic  like  ours  is  to  be  found  in  the  intelligence  and 
virtue  of  its  citizens.  So  universally  is  this  recognized, 
that  the  right  of  a  republican  government  to  tax  its  citi- 
zens for  the  support  of  free  schools,  and  thus  to  protect 
itself  against  the  dangers  arising  from  ignorance,  is  ac- 
cepted by  all,  except  a  few  political  fanatics,  as  an  unques- 
tioned principle.  Self-defence  is  a  first  law  of  life,  wheth- 
er of  the  individual  or  of  the  nation.  A  true  republic, 
which  is  only  the  national  life  embodied,  has  a  right  to 
protect  itself  by  compelling  its  citizens  to  educate  their 
children,  by  whose  want  of  intelligence  the  life  of  the 
republic  would  be  imperilled. 

But  mere  intelligence  insures  permanence  to  no  form  of 
government,  free  or  despotic.  No  republic  has  yet  per- 
ished, in  which  intelligence  was  not  more  general  and 
hi2:hcr  at  its  overthrow  than  at  its  foundins:.  The  truth 
is,  that  knowledge  without  virtue,  intelligence  without 
conscience,  warrants  neither  appreciation  nor  respect  for 
the  useful,  the  just,  or  the  sacred.  To  discipline  the  intel- 
lects of  men  as  a  protection  to  the  state,  while  we  neglect 
their  hearts,  is  like  building  dams  upon  quicksands. 

If  free  governments  can  be  justified  in  protecting  them- 
selves against  the  contingent  dangers  of  ignorance,  still 
more  in  protecting  themselves  against  the  undeveloped 
force  of  passion  and  vice,  —  a  danger  against  which  the 
free  school  has  presented  as  yet  no  sufficient  barrier, 
and  against  which  neither  our  state  governments  nor  our 


302  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


national  government  have  made  any  direct  provision.  It 
is  idle  to  say  that  the  free  school  should  train  the  heart  as 
well  as  the  intellect,  that  it  ought  to  forestall  vice  as  well 
as  supplant  ignorance.  The  truth  is,  the  great  body  of 
teachers  in  the  common  school  suppose,  and  will  continue 
to  suppose,  their  tasks  completed  when  they  have  seen  to 
it  that  their  scholars  know  their  lessons.  If  they  venture 
on  the  role  of  teachers  of  morals,  it  is  to  perform  a  task 
which  the  letter  of  their  contracts  does  not  exact,  or  which, 
if  exacted,  would  probably  be  irksome  and  so  be  only  per- 
functorily performed.  The  State  can  never  provide  itself 
with  moral  defences  against  revolution  and  anarchy  by 
any  amount  of  provisions  for  free  schools.  Perhaps  it 
never  can  provide  them  directly  by  any  kind  of  statutory 
provision.  Forbidden  by  organic  law  to  establish  any 
form  of  religion,  or  to  enjoin  any  species  of  religious 
instruction,  the  only  morality  the  State  with  us  can  foster 
will  be  the  morality  of  prudence  and  of  calculated  chances. 
But  a  morality  without  God,  without  a  supremely  perfect 
Being  who  is  at  once  its  source  and  its  standard,  is  a 
morality  that  will  change  with  the  changing  opinions  of 
men. 

But  the  State  can  indirectly  protect  itself  morally  by 
statute,  and  by  statute  which  its  fundamental  laws  will 
sustain.  It  can  enact  that  one  day  in  seven  shall  be  de- 
voted to  moral  and  religious  uses,  and  shall  not  be  secular- 
ized. And,  by  so  enacting,  it  does  not  trench  on  the  per- 
sonal liberty  of  the  citizen  any  more  than  when  it  enacts 
(as  it  is  conceded  to  have  the  right  to  do)  that  every  citi- 
zen shall  give  to  his  child  some  degree  and  kind  of  educa- 
tion, and  that  he  shall  give  it  on  certain  days  and  hours  of 
the  week.  It  simply  enacts  that  one  day  in  seven  shall  be 
reserved  for  moral  and  religious  instruction,  but  leaves 
every  citizen  to  determine  for  himself  with  absolute  free- 
dom in  what  manner  and  by  whom  that  instruction  shall 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     303 

be  given.  And  whoever  may  scrupulously  object  to  the 
day  which  the  State,  in  compliance  with  the  wishes  of  an 
overwhelming  majority,  may  appoint,  shall  be  protected  in 
his  observance  of  any  other  day  which  he  may  select. 
But  the  State  cannot,  consistently  with  its  educational 
laws,  tolerate  any  man,  or  any  body  of  men,  in  refusing  to 
provide  moral  and  religious  instruction  for  themselves  and 
their  children,  or  in  contumaciously  abusing  a  day  which 
the  State  may  set  apart  for  such  instruction.^  No  reason 
can  be  alleged  against  the  right  of  the  State  to  set  apart 
such  a  day,  and  to  shield  it  by  statute  from  abuse,  which 
cannot  be  pressed  with  greater  force  against  the  right  of 
the  State  to  demand  that  some  years  of  every  childhood 
shall  be  given  to  mental  training,  and  that  all  real  estate 
by  whomsoever  owned,  citizen  or  foreigner,  shall  be  taxed 
for  the  cost  of  it.  If  the  State  may  justly  protect  itself 
against  the  danger  of  ignorance,  still  more  may  it,  and 
ought  it,  to  protect  itself  against  the  incomparably  greater 
dangers  of  irreligion  and  immorality. 

The  truth  is,  this  is  a  Christian  nation,  whether  the 
Constitution  may  in  so  many  words  avow  it  or  not.  The 
very  corner-stone  of  the  national  fabric  rests  on  faith  in 

1  John  Stuart  Mill  in  his  volume  "On  Liberty,"  chap,  iv.,  characterizes  "  sabbata-  \/- 
rian  legislation  "  as  "an  example  of  illegitimate  interference  with  the  rightful  liberty  of 
the  individual ;  "  and  with  strange  intellectual  perversity  affirms  that  "  the  only  ground 
on  which  restrictions  on  Sunday  amusements  can  be  defended  must  be  that  they  are  reli- 
giously wrong."  And  yet,  in  chap.  v.  of  the  same  treatise,  where  he  deals  with  "ap- 
plications "  of  his  principles,  we  have  a  vigorous  defence  of  "  compulsory  education." 
lie  regards  it  as  "almost  a  self-evident  axiom,  that  the  state  should  require  and 
compel  the  education,  up  to  a  certain  standard,  of  every  human  being  who  is  born 
its  citizen."  He  declares  that  "  the  objections  which  are  urged  with  reason  against 
state  education  do  not  apply  to  the  enforcement  of  education  by  the  state,  but  to  the 
state's  taking  upon  itself  to  direct  that  education ;  which  is  a  totally  different  thing." 
Precisely  so  is  it  in  respect  to  what  Mill  stigmatizes  as  "  Sabbatarian  legislation."  The 
state  ought  not  to  give,  in  this  country  the  state  is  prohibited  from  giving  and  from 
requiring  to  be  given,  any  distinctive  form  or  species  of  religious  instruction  ;  but,  if  it 
can  and  ought  to  enforce  education  of  the  intellect,  it  certainly  can  and  ought  at  least 
by  legislation  to  recognize  and  protect  by  law  from  abuse  a  day  which  may  be  set  apart 
for  the  education  of  the  moral  affections. 


304  SA  BBA  TH  ESS  A  YS, 

the  Christian's  God.  All  our  indigenous  institutions,  civil 
and  religious,  more  or  less  distinctly  recognize  this  faith. 
The  Christian  sabbath  has  been  from  the  beginning  an 
integral  part  of  all  that  has  been  distinctively  national  in 
our  history.  To  that  sabbath  let  us  cling  both  by  statute 
and  by  reverent  observance  of  it  as  one  of  the  sure  safe- 
guards of  all  our  liberties.  If  foreigners  come  to  us  with- 
out a  sabbath,  and  with  unwillingness  to  observe  ours,  let 
us  say  to  them,  "  If  you  like  our  national  life  well  enough 
to  desire  to  become  a  part  of  it,  we  insist  that  you  must 
accept  all  the  institutions  embodying  that  life,  our  sab- 
bath included." 

In  conclusion,  let  history  and  observation  teach  us. 
Historically  we  know  that  by  no  people  on  the  globe,  and 
at  no  period,  was  the  sabbath  ever  more  strictly,  or,  on  the 
whole,  criticise  as  we  may,  more  rationally,  kept  than  by 
the  people  of  New  England  a  half-century  ago.  And 
among  no  people  were  the  blessings  of  a  free  government, 
and  of  all  the  institutions  which  free  governments  insure, 
ever  so  conspicuous.  Nowhere  were  crimes  ever  less 
common  ;  nowhere  were  property  and  life  ever  safer.  The 
culture  of  the  people  was  by  no  means  high ;  their  tastes 
were  not  refined ;  their  manners  were  rude :  but  they 
were  honest ;  they  were  lovers  of  justice,  and  always  law- 
abiding.  Their  government  was  not  perfect ;  themselves 
were  not  faultless :  and  yet  we  are  justified  in  affirming 
'that  nowhere  else  on  this  earth  was  there  ever  presented 
a  nearer  approach  to  ideal  free  government,  —  a  govern- 
ment free  in  the  origin  of  its  powers  and  administration, 
and  securing  personal  freedom  and  equal  rights  to  all  the 
governed,  —  than  in  the  New-England  township  as  it  ex- 
isted before  the  influx  of  foreigners  and  of  foreign  ideas 
and  practices.  But  for  all  this  New  England  was  indebted, 
more  than  to  all  else,  to  her  unyielding  regard  for  the  sab- 
bath, and  to  the  sound  teaching  which  her  respect  for  the 


THE  SABBATH  IX  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     305 

sabbath  led  her  to  Usten  to  from  her  pulpits.  To  her  sab- 
bath and  her  use  of  it,  above  all  else,  has  New  Endand 
been  indebted  for  all  that  has  justly  distinguished  her  in 
the  annals  of  our  common  country. 

What  history  thus  teaches  positively,  observation  teach- 
es negatively.  Where  there  is  no  sabbath,  and  no  sabbath 
ministrations  from  the  pulpit,  free  institutions  are  either 
impossible,  or  can  maintain  at  best  but  a  feeble  and  preca- 
rious existence.  To  a  perception  of  this  truth  the  living 
statesmen  of  France  are  awaking  as  their  predecessors 
never  awoke.  In  our  own  land,  wherever  the  sabbath  is 
misused,  our  institutions  are  recognized  as  in  peril.  That 
there  is  in  all  parts  of  our  country  an  increasing  decay  in 
the  popular  regard  for  the  sabbath,  and  a  growing  indiffer- 
ence to  the  sabbath  instructions  of  the  pulpit,  will  not  be 
denied.  Neither  will  it  be  denied  that  there  is  a  corre- 
sponding decay,  even  here  in  New  England,  of  that  old  jeal- 
ousy for  the  honor  and  dignity  and  purity  and  stability  of 
our  distinctive  institutions,  which  was  once  characteristic 
of  its  humblest  citizens.  There  was  a  time  here  in  Mas- 
sachusetts when  political  knaves,  whatever  their  ability, 
would  not  have  had  the  audacity  to  attempt  what  they 
now  venture  on  boldly  and  without  a  blush. 


306  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


THE   LAW   OF   REST    FOR  ALL   NECESSARY  TO  THE 
LIBERTY   OF   REST   FOR   EACH. 

BY  LEONARD   WOOLSEY    BACON,    D.D.,   OF   NORWICH,    CONN. 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Fellow -Citizens,  —  I  purpose 
scrupulously  to  refrain  from  overstepping  the  narrow  lim- 
its of  the  thesis  on  which  I  have  been  asked  to  speak, 
in  any  such  way  as  to  encroach  on  ground  occupied  by 
others.  But  there  is  one  point  essential  to  a  right  under- 
standing of  this  and  of  many  other  parts  of  the  subject 
before  us,  which,  through  the  regretted  absence  of  Judge 
Strong,  has  failed  to  be  formally  set  before  the  Conven- 
tion,^ and  which,  therefore,  I  may  be  permitted  to  illus- 
trate by  an  incident  that  occurred  in  the  first  International 
Sabbath  Congress,  held  three  years  ago  at  Geneva. 

After  many  hours  of  conference  and  discussion,  the 
Congress  had  been  brought  to  the  point  of  adopting  the 
platform  of  a  permanent  international  sabbath  league  ; 
and  of  this  platform  a  conspicuous  article  was  the  one  em- 
bodying a  ''  scriptural  basis  "  (as  it  was  called)  consisting 
of  the  Fourth  Commandment  and  the  declaration  of  our 
Saviour,  "  The  sabbath  was  made  for  man."  The  question 
being  on  the  adoption  of  this  article,  a  fair-haired,  near- 
sighted, and  broad-shouldered  gentleman,  who  had  been 
thus  far  an  earnest  and  useful  member  of  the  convention, 
arose,  and  very  modestly  and  courteously  asked  (in  the 
German  language)  that  no  basis  of  organization  should  be 
insisted  on  which  would  exclude  him  and  those  whom  he 
represented  from  co-operation  in  a  work  so  beneficent  as 

1  Judge  Strong  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  had  been  expected  to 
read  a  paper  on  "  The  Civil  and  the  Religious  Sabbath." 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     30/ 

the  maintenance  of  a  weekly  day  of  rest.  He  himself  was 
a  rationalist  pastor  from  Bremen  :  he  was  the  representa- 
tive of  an  "  Arbeiterverein,"  or  some  sort  of  working- 
men's  organization  of  a  socialist  complexion  ;  and  neither 
he  nor  the  Bremen  working-men  had  any  kind  of  faith  in 
the  "  scriptural  basis,"  in  Old  Testament  or  New,  which 
was  proposed  as  a  condition  of  co-operation.  Only  they 
felt  that  a  weekly  day  of  rest,  guarded  and  guarantied  by 
law,  would  be  an  immense  blessing  to  the  working-man 
and  to  the  whole  public ;  and  they  asked  the  privilege  of 
doing  what  they  could,  in  their  own  way,  and  acting  from 
their  own  point  of  yiew,  in  co-operation  with  those  who 
differed  from  them  in  opinion,  to  promote  the  end  which 
they  all  sought  in  common. 

With  many  expressions  of  personal  respect,  the  Con- 
gress nevertheless  voted  by  an  overwhelming  majority  to 
allow  their  unorthodox  brother  no  part  nor  lot  with  them 
in  their  efforts  to  promote  a  social  and  legislative  reform. 
But  I  have  the  satisfaction  of  assuring  you  that  this  action 
was  not  taken  without  an  energetic  remonstrance  from 
the  representative  of  the  United  States,  who  objected  to 
hearing  America  cited  as  an  example  of  enforcing  religious 
duties  by  secular  laws,  and  declared  that  our  American 
Sunday  legislation,  which  they  so  admired,  was  founded, 
not  on  the  principle  of  enforcing  a  religious  duty  by  civil 
law,  but  on  the  democratic  principles  of  liberty,  equality, 
and  fraternity,  —  principles  which  we  believe  that  we  un- 
derstand quite  as  well  in  America  as  they  do  in  Geneva  or 
Paris.  A  religious  basis,  he  declared,  was  considered  in 
America  to  be  essential  to  co-operation  in  religious  move- 
ments ;  but  that  we  did  not  always  find  it  necessary  to 
quote  Scripture  in  a  political  manifesto,  though  this  was 
sometimes  done.  It  was  important,  he  said,  that  those 
who  undertook  to  deal  with  the  sabbath-question  should 
remember  that  the  sabbath-question  is  not  one  question, 


308  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

but  two  questions;  that  the  religious  sabbath,  consecrated 
to  worship  and  to  divine  commemoration,  and  the  civil 
holiday,  maintained  by  force  of  law,  have  this  in  common, 
that,  in  many  countries,  they  coincide  upon  the  same  day, 
but  they  are  not  the  same  :  the  former  cannot  be  enforced 
by  secular  legislation,  and  the  last  cannot,  in  this  age,  be 
sustained  merely  by  Bible-texts. 

It  was  not  much  of  a  speech,  but  it  made  something  of 
an  impression ;  and  the  speaker  was  entirely  contented 
with  the  result  of  it  when,  in  the  great  closing  assembly, 
the  most  eloquent  confereiicier  in  the  French  language, 
Ernest  Naville,  took  this  distinction  for  his  text,  and  in  a 
discourse  of  more  than  an  hour's  duration  commended  the 
religious  sabbath  to  the  observance  of  every  good  Chris- 
tian, and  the  civil  sabbath  to  the  support  of  every  right- 
minded  citizen,  Christian  or  not.  I  wish  this  exquisitely 
lucid  address  might  be  added,  in  English,  to  our  scanty 
stock  of  good  popular  literature  relating  to  the  subject. 
It  might  help  to  supersede  some  of  the  superstitious  and 
fanatical  literature  now  or  lately  current,  from  the  effects 
of  which  the  sabbath  cause  is  sufferins:. 

Let  me  ask  you,  in  order  to  avoid  the  misunderstanding 
which  will  otherwise  be  inevitable,  to  keep  this  distinction 
in  mind,  and  remember,  that,  throughout  this  paper,  I  am 
speaking  primarily  not  of  the  religious,  but  of  the  civil, 
institution. 

I  shall  presume,  then,  on  your  good  sense  and  clear 
apprehension  in  this  matter,  taking  for  granted  that  you 
are  wiser  than  the  narrowness  of  the  International  Con- 
gress, and  that  on  the  enforcement  of  the  external  quiet 
and  repose  of  the  civil  Sunday  (which  I  understand  to  be 
the  aspect  of  the  question  on  which  I  am  invited  to  speak) 
you  are  willing  to  entertain  a  line  of  argument  broad  and 
liberal  enough  to  demand  the  adhesion  and  support  of 
every  reasonable  man,  whatever  his  views  concerning  the 
religious  sanctions  of  the  day. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     309 

The  question  is  one  of  —  what  shall  I  say  ?  work- 
ing-men's rights,  I  was  about  to  say,  except  that  this 
expression  has  become  so  smutted  in  the  dirty  hands  of 
demagogues,  that  one  loathes  to  take  it  up  after  them, — 
the  question  is  one  of  personal  liberty  ;  how  to  secure  for 
every  citizen  the  liberty  to  rest  one  day  in  seven. 

There  is  a  very  free  and  easy  answer  to  this  question 
on  the  tongue's  end  of  some  wise  people,  who  deliver  it  as 
an  axiom  that  the  short  and  ready  way  to  universal  liberty 
of  resting  is  simply  to  keep  hands  off,  not  to  meddle  with 
the  matter  by  legislation,  and  let  everybody  do  as  he 
pleases  about  it.     What  can  be  simpler .'' 

The  temptation  is  irresistible,  to  answer  these  people 
according  to  their  folly,  and  condemn  them  out  of  their 
own  mouths.  For  it  happens,  curiously  enough,  that 
many  of  the  very  people  who  are  clamoring  against  our 
six-day  law,  as  an  unwarrantable  interference  with  indi- 
vidual liberty,  are  just  as  clamorous  in  favor  of  an  eight- 
hour  law  of  their  own  invention.  "What  do  you  want," 
let  me  ask,  *'  of  an  eight-hour  law }  Why  not  leave  the 
matter  to  every  man  to  decide  for  himself,  whether  he  shall 
work  eight  hours,  or  ten,  or  fifteen.?  Don't  let  us  have 
any  meddlesome  legislation.  'The  best  government  is 
that  which  governs'  least.'  Surely,  if  your  reasoning  is 
good  concerning  days  in  the  week,  it  is  equally  good  con- 
cerning hours  in  the  day! " 

This  argument  has  been  curiously  and  admirably  antici- 
pated in  the  speech  of  Macaulay  in  defence  of  the  princi- 
ple of  a  ten-hour  law,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  in  1846. 
The  right  and  expediency  of  guarding  the  liberty  to  rest, 
by  legally  limiting  the  time  of  labor,  was  vindicated  against 
this  very  objection  by  the  analogy  of  the  Sunday-laws. 
Objectors  said,  "If  this  ten-hour  limitation  be  good  for  the 
working-people,  rely  on  it  that  they  will  themselves  estab- 
lish it  without  any  law."  —  ''Why  not  reason,"  answered 


3 1 0  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

Macaulay,  —  *' why  not  reason  in  the  same  way  about  the 
Sunday  ?  Why  not  say,  *  If  it  be  a  good  thing  for  the 
people  of  London  to  shut  their  shops  one  day  in  seven, 
they  will  find  it  out,  and  will  shut  their  shops  without  a 
law  *  ?  Sir,  the  answer  is  obvious.  I  have  no  doubt,  that, 
if  you  were  to  poll  the  shopkeepers  of  London,  you  would 
find  an  immense  majority,  probably  a  hundred  to  one,  in 
favor  of  closing  shops  on  the  Sunday ;  and  yet  it  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  give  to  the  wish  of  the  majority  the 
sanction  of  a  law;  for,  if  there  were  no  such  law,  the 
minority,  by  opening  their  shops,  would  soon  force  the 
majority  to  do  the  same."^ 

How  curiously  the  wheel  of  this  discussion  has  come 
around,  so  that  now  there  is  a  party  of  people  soberly 
alleging  what  that  famous  orator  enunciated  as  an  absurd- 
ity, and  claiming  as  an  axiom  what  he  proved  from  the 
premises  which  they  are  trying  to  knock  away ! 

This  whole  subject  gets  its  liveliest  illustration  when, 
from  time  to  time,  some  one  of  those  vocations  which  the 
general  convenience  allows  to  be  excepted  from  the  gen- 
eral law  of  Sunday  rest  seeks  to  be  included  within  the 
law.  Repeatedly,  for  instance,  there  have  been  memorials 
from  all  the  barbers  of  a  town,  asking  to  have  their  own 
shops  shut  by  law.  Very  absurd,  isn't  it  t  If  they  want 
their  shops  shut,  why  don't  they  shut  them  ?  This  was 
the  view  taken  by  one  enterprising  young  colored  man 
in  a  Connecticut  town,  not  long  ago.  There  was  a  move- 
ment, among  his  competitors  in  the  profession,  to  have  all 
the  barbers'  shops  shut  on  Sunday.  "  All  right ! "  he 
said,  "you  go  right  on,  and  shut  your  shops.  Never  mind 
me."     And  so  all  the  shops  had  to  be  kept  open. 

Another  illustration  of  a  like  character  comes  to  me 
from   a   similar   quarter.     A   coal-dealer,    near   a   certain 

1  Speeches  of  Macaulay,  ed.  Tauchnitz,  ii.,  ao8,  209.  The  whole  speech  is  worth 
reading  for  its  close  relation  to  our  subject. 


THE  SABBA  TH  IN  THE  STA  TE  AND  SOCIETY.     3 1 1 

Steamboat-landing,  finds  that  in  the  competitions  of  busi- 
ness his  Sunday  rest  has  been  completely  taken  away  from 
him.  All  the  little  tugs  and  propellers  find  that  they  can 
get  their  coal  put  in  on  Sunday,  and  so  they  come  Sunday 
in  preference  to  any  other  day.  Says  he,  "I  don't  so  much 
as  get  time  to  go  to  early  mass,  and  I  am  compelled  to 
keep  busy  from  morning  till  night.  I  can't  refuse  them ; 
for  if  I  do  they  will  quit  me  altogether,  and  I  shall  lose 
my  business.  /  wish  to  heaven  that  some  one  would  prose- 
cute me  !  "  A  clearer  illustration  of  the  value  of  the  law 
of  rest  for  all,  in  securing  the  liberty  of  rest  for  each  one, 
can  hardly  be  asked  for,  than  this  case  of  a  man  who 
wants  to  be  prosecuted  himself  in  order  to  protect  him 
from  the  necessity  of  doing  what  he  does  not  want  to  do, 
but  has  to  do  because  he  is  at  liberty  to  do  it. 

I  put  it  to  the  whole  trade  of  labor-reformers,  who  want 
to  begin  their  reforms  by  breaking  down  the  best  existing 
safeguard  of  the  working-man's  liberty  of  rest  and  leisure. 
I  put  the  question  to  them,  and  beg  for  an  answer  if  there 
is  one  to  be  given.  After  you  have  succeeded  —  I  do  not 
say  in  amending  or  repealing,  but  in  defying  and  nullifying, 
our  six-day  law,  how  much  good  is  your  eight-hour  law 
likely  to  do  you,  supposing  that  you  get  it  passed }  You 
succeed,  by  mere  defiant  law-breaking,  in  trampling  down 
a  statute  venerable  with  use,  anchored  deep  in  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  people,  and  consecrated  by  many  a  solemn 
religious  sanction.  And  you  propose  to  set  up  in  place 
of  it  a  novel  invention  of  your  own  called  an  **  eight-hour 
law."  Do  you  suppose  that,  when  you  have  taught  the 
public  how  little  you  care  for  law  when  it  interferes  with 
your  convenience,  you  will  find  it  an  easy  matter  to  en- 
force law  against  others  when  it  interferes  with  theirs  } 

But  here  I  wish,  with  perfect  candor,  to  answer  a  ques- 
tion which  does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  adequately  answered 
by  the  average  "  Evangelical  Christian  "  in  his  arguments 


3 1 2  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

on  this  subject.  Our  German  friend  will  ask  whether  it 
is  not  possible  to  make  a  distinction  between  the  prohibi- 
tion of  labor,  and  the  prohibition  of  recreation  and  orderly 
and  innocent  amusement.  And  my  answer  to  him  is 
(whatever  yours  may  be),  "  Yes,  it  is  possible,  though  it 
may  be  difficult ;  and,  whenever  as  orderly  citizens  you 
choose  to  move  in  this  direction  for  amendments  of  the 
law,  we  are  ready  to  discuss  your  proposals  with  simple 
reference  to  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number." 
It  is  useless  for  us  to  say  that  public  amusements,  how- 
ever quiet  and  orderly,  involve  labor  on  some  one's  part. 
So  does  public  worship.  It  is  labor  to  blow  a  church- 
organ,  as  much  as  to  blow  a  concert-hall  organ.  No 
legislation  pretends  to  protect  every  one's  Sunday  rest. 
The  general  principle  is  modified  by  considerations  of 
public  convenience  and  expediency.  There  is  nothing  in 
the  world,  then,  to  hinder  us  from  entering  into  the  can- 
did discussion  of  any  proposed  amendment  intended  to 
relax  the  rigor  of  the  law  concerning  amusements  while 
still  guarding,  as  far  as  possible,  the  provisions  of  the  law 
concerning  labor.  Some  of  you  will  object,  perhaps,  that 
in  our  duties  as  citizens  we  are  bound  to  be  governed  by 
the  divine  teachings,  and  that  legislation  ought  to  be  con- 
formed to  the  word  of  God.  Agreed.  But  then,  nothing 
is  so  clearly  revealed  in  the  word  of  God,  whether  in  Old 
Testament  or  in  New,  if  men  would  but  see  it,  as  this, — 

I  that  the  divine  rule  of  public  legislation  is  the  rule  of 
expediency,  and  not  the  rule  of  absolute  right  and  wrong. 
The  divine  example  of  public  legislation  is  to  give  "  laws 
that  are  not  good,"  when  such  laws  are,  on  the  whole, 
the  best  that  the  case  admits.  Legislation  is  never  more 
contrary  to  the  word  of  God,  than  when  it  is  rigorously 
conformed  to  the  word  of  God  without  regard  to  expe- 
diency, local  and  temporary.  I  repeat  it,  then:  there  is 
:nothing  in  our  convictions  of  religious  duty  to  hinder  us 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     313 

from  candidly  discussing  any  measure  that  may  be  consid 
ered  to  be  for  the  good  of  society,  and  looking  towards  a 
relaxation  of  the  Sunday  law  respecting  amusements,  while 
maintaining  it  in  vigor  respecting  labor.  Possibly  this 
might  be  accomplished  by  carefully  amending  the  law. 
But  one  thing  is  perfectly  sure  :  it  cant  be  done  by  break- 
ing the  lazu.  You  cannot  break  this  statute  half  across, 
and  leave  the  other  half  sound.  Some  of  these  fine  da3^s, 
as  business  grows  brisk,  you  will  get  back  from  your 
Sunday  excursion  or  beer-garden,  and  find  a  notice  that 
next  Sunday,  owing  to  pressure  of  business,  the  factory 
will  run,  or  the  shop  will  be  open,  and  that  you  are  wanted 
for  a  day's  work.  And  if  you  think  that  then  you  will  be 
able  to  plead,  for  your  rest  and  your  liberty,  the  very  stat- 
ute that  you  have  defiantly  broken  for  your  amusement, 
you  will  have  ample  time  and  opportunity  to  find  out  your 
mistake. 

Here,  after  all,  we  face  this  subject  in  its  gravest  aspect. 
For  I  say  it  with  all  respect  to  this  assembly,  yet  not 
expecting  you  to  agree  with  me,  —  expecting  rather  that 
some  of  you  will  be  shocked  when  you  hear  it  said,  —  that 
the  sanctity  of  the  sabbath  is  not  so  serious  a  matter  as 
the  sanctity  of  human  law  and  government ;  that  the  dam- 
age and  peril  to  society,  the  church,  the  state,  and  the 
affront  to  the  authority  of  God,  in  the  habitual  public 
defiance  of  the  Sunday-laws,  consist  less  in  the  violation 
of  the  commandment  than  they  do  in  the  violation  of  the 
statute.  The  divine  authority  less  distinctly  binds  us  to 
the  commandment  than  it  binds  us  to  the  statute.  There 
are,  amongst  us,  citizens  of  many  different  religions,  and 
citizens  of  no  religion  at  all ;  and,  even  among  Christian 
citizens,  there  are  the  widest  conscientious  variations  as 
to  the  binding  force  of  the  Fourth  Commandment  on  the 
individual  and  the  state ;  and  still  further  variations  as  to 
the  nature  of  the  duties  which  that  commandment  enjoins, 


314  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

if  it  is  binding.  You  may  lament  these  variations  ;  you 
may  hold  them  blameworthy ;  but  you  cannot  deny  the 
fact  that  they  exist ;  and  it  will  have  a  very  wholesome 
effect  on  our  dealings  with  the  matter,  to  look  this  inexora- 
ble fact  distinctly  in  the  face,  and  to  bear  habitually  in 
mind,  that  the  traditionary  notions  of  sabbatical  duty  to 
which  we  are  accustomed  are  the  notions  only  of  a  very 
small  party  in  the  Christian  Church.  But  here  is  a  point 
on  which  the  divine  will  is  unmistakable,  —  a  point  on 
which  there  is  no  room  for  variation  among  Christians,  or 
among  good  citizens,  to  wit  :  that  the  laws  of  man  are  to 
be  obeyed  as  under  God's  authority,  and  for  God's  sake. 
The  peril  of  the  present  time  is  not  half  so  much  that  we 
are  becoming  a  nation  of  sabbath-breakers,  as  that  we  are 
becoming  —  as  a  well-known  writer  has  recently  said  — 
"a  nation  of  law-breakers."  The  question  whether  the 
Sunday-laws  shall  be  amended,  or  even  repealed,  and  the 
common  rest-day  of  rich  and  poor  be  left  unprotected 
from  the  rapacity  of  commercial  and  industrial  competi- 
tion, is  a  question  which,  grave  and  portentous  as  it  is,  it 
is  nevertheless  possible  to  contemplate  with  equanimity. 
Whenever  this  question  comes  up,  we  are  bound  to  meet 
our  fellow-citizens  with  patient  argument,  and  abide  the 
arbitrament  of  the  ballot-box.  Under  our  form  of  gov- 
ernment, if  the  majority,  on  such  a  point,  will  be  fools, 
there  is  no  way  but  to  let  them  learn  their  folly  by  the 
consequences.  But  to  this  other  question,  whether  law, 
while  it  is  law,  shall  be  enforced  and  obeyed,  there  is  but 
one  answer  compatible  with  the  dignity  or  life  of  the 
state. 

The  argument  which  I  have  now  set  forth  approves  the 
Sunday-laws  of  any  state  only  so  far  as  those  laws  confine 
themselves,  with  simplicity  and  good  faith,  first,  to  main- 
taining the  day  of  rest  from  labor  as  a  universal  privilege, 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     315 

and,  secondly,  to  taking  the  necessary  precautions  lest  the 
privilege  be  abused  to  the  detriment  of  public  order  and 
morals.  For  any  thing  beyond  this,  these  laws  must  find 
their  defence  —  if  there  is  any  rational  defence  to  be  found 
—  in  some  other  line  of  reasoning.  But  there  can  be  no 
higher  act  of  wisdom  on  the  part  of  those  who  desire  to 
see  the  universal  repose  and  quiet  order  of  the  New-Eng- 
land sabbath-day  revived  and  perpetuated,  than,  of  their 
own  accord,  to  see  to  it  that  our  Sunday -laws  are  cleared 
of  every  thing  which  they  ought  not  to  contain.  The 
early  legislation  of  New  England  on  this  subject  was 
undoubtedly  directed,  in  some  particulars,  to  the  enforce- 
ment of  a  religious  observance  of  the  day.  This  was 
consistent  with  the  State-Church,  or  rather  the  Church- 
State,  notions  of  that  time :  it  is  utterly  irreconcilable  with 
our  own  principles.  I  do  not  know  that  any  vestige  of  it 
remains.  Judging  from  the  digest  of  the  Sunday  laws 
of  New  England,  lately  published  by  my  friend  Walter 
Learned,^  our  statute-books  are  clear  of  any  remainder  of 
it.     If  not,  they  ought  to  be. 

Further,  we  are  suffering,  both  in  the  community  and  in 
private  consciences,  the  re-action  from  overstrained  state- 
ments concerning  sabbatical  duty.  There  is  a  canon  of 
Sunday  observance,  written,  not  in  the  Scriptures  of 
either  Testament,  but  in  the  Westminster  Catechism  and 
the  traditions  of  the  elders,  commanding  that  "the  en- 
tire time  "  that  can  be  spared  from  works  of  necessity  or 
mercy  shall  be  "  spent  in  acts  of  worship,  public  or  pri- 
vate." I  do  not  speak  of  this  as  a  rule  that  is  seriously 
professed  by  any  of  us.  On  the  contrary,  we  have,  one 
and  all,  abandoned  it  as  a  rule  of  our  own  action,  and  we 
keep  it,  if  at  all,  only  for  torturing  tender  consciences,  and 
for  judging  our  neighbors  by.  But  it  would  not  be  alto- 
gether strange  if  the  spirit  of  it  might  be  found  lurking 

1-  In  Good  Company,  No.  II. 


3 1 6  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

here  and  there  in  some  neglected  corner  of  the  statute- 
book.  If  so,  it  is  of  high  importance  to  the  success  of 
our  cause,  that  it  be  exorcised. 

Further  still,  it  is  not  an  unheard-of  thing  for  earnest 
and  zealous  labors  in  behalf  of  a  good  cause  -to  become 
infected  with  that  other  spirit,  which  has  been  alleged  to 
have  Boston  for  its  metropolis,  but  which  has  its  spheres 
of  lively  activity  in  many  a  place  beside,  —  the  spirit  of 
"malignant  philanthropy."  It  is  this  spirit  that  is  slan- 
derously imputed  to  the  English  Puritans,  who  interfered 
with  bear-baiting,  it  is  said,  less  out  of  pity  to  the  bear 
than  out  of  spite  at  the  enjoyment  of  the  bystanders. 
How  naturally  it  attaches  itself  to  such  matters  as  we  have 
in  hand,  might  be  illustrated  by  many  instances  ;  but  it  i3 
enough  to  take  a  single  one  from  Mr.  Gilbert  Hamerton. 
He  tells  us  of  a  certain  neighborhood  in  Scotland,  along 
the  shore  of  a  loch  which  it  was  sometimes  necessary  to 
cross  on  Sunday.  The  local  code  of  ethics  permitted  the 
crossing  in  such  cases,  but  on  condition  that  it  should  be 
made  with  a  row-boat,  not  with  a  sail-boat.  The  row-boat 
involved,  indeed,  more  labor ;  but  the  sail-boat  might  in- 
volve eiijoyment,  and  this  was  a  thing  to  be  prevented  at 
any  sacrifice  !  If  our  Sunday -laws  are  to  be  preserved  and 
enforced,  it  must  be  made  unmistakably  plain  that  the 
object  both  of  the  law  and  of  its  enforcement  is  not  to  pre- 
vent enjoyment,  but  to  secure  the  universal  privilege  of 
rest  from  labor  without  detriment  to  the  good  order  and 
morals  of  society.  No  reasonable  person  will  deny  that  it 
is  competent  for  the  same  law  which  interferes  to  liberate 
men  from  labor,  to  interfere  to  protect  society  from  the 
disorderly  abuse  of  this  liberty.  The  question  of  the 
manner  and  degree  of  either  interference  is  an  open  ques- 
tion to  be  decided  by  considerations  of  expediency. 

We  cannot,  fellow-citizens,  keep  it  too  distinctly  in  mind 
that  this  part  of  the  sabbath-question,  the  matter  of  Sun- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     ^"^7 

day-laws,  is  a  matter  of  government  and  police,  —  a  politi- 
cal matter  ;  and  I  know  of  no  way  of  carrying  political 
measures,  in  a  republic,  but  to  have  votes  enough.  There 
is,  indeed,  a  certain  class  of  reformatory  politicians  who 
have  a  mystical  idea  of  carrying  elections  without  votes, 
—  to  whom  there  is  no  scripture  in  all  the  Bible  so  pre- 
cious as  that  of  the  thinning-out  of  Gideon's  army.  These 
are  men  of  faith,  who  believe  that  a  few  warm-hearted, 
earnest  citizens,  that  will  march  fearlessly  and  vigorously 
up  to  the  polls,  and  jam  their  tickets  into  the  ballot-box 
with  sufficient  energy,  can  easily  outvote  ten  times  their 
number.  It  is  well  for  us  to  leave  this  sort  of  imbecility 
to  the  school  of  professional  reformers  to  whom  it  belongs, 
and  coolly  to  take  the  measure  of  the  difficulties  of  the 
situation,  —  for  it  has  difficulties.  The  measures  that  are 
to  be  carried  and  enforced,  let  us  remember,  will  not  be 
carried  by  the  votes  exclusively  of  Evangelical  Christians 
of  orthodox  doctrinal  views,  —  that  is,  not  without  a  very 
extraordinary  revival  in  the  mean  time.  It  is  well  that 
we  should  ask  ourselves  whose  the  other  votes  are  to 
be.  It  is  well,  for  every  reason,  that  we  should  put  our- 
selves on  ground  so  solid,  so  broad,  so  unselfish  and  un- 
partisan,  so  clearly  right,  that  no  reasonable  man  can 
object  to  it  as  unreasonable;  that  we  should  refuse  to 
allow  this  great  social  interest  to  be  complicated  with 
other  questions  ;  in  short,  that  we  should  narrow  the  issue^ 
and  widen  the  basis  of  co-operation. 


3 1 3  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


THE  SABBATH  AND   OUR  FOREIGN   POPULATION. 

BY   REV.    REUEN   THOMAS   OF   BROOKLINE. 

One  of  the  most  perplexing  and  discouraging  elements 
in  this  sabbath-rest  theme  is  the  existence  among  us  of  a 
very  large  and  constantly  increasing  foreign  population, 
—  a  population  that  has  grown  up  in  countries  whence  the 
sabbath  has  almost  entirely  departed.  In  this  term  ''for- 
eign population,"  it  is  not  necessary  to  include  Englishmen 
or  Scotchmen,  or  North-of-Ireland  Irishmen.  I  fear,  how- 
ever, that  all  other  Irishmen  will  be  found  acting  and  vot- 
ing with  the  foreign  population  proper  on  this  question  of 
sabbath  rest ;  for  the  political  and  ecclesiastical  sympa- 
thies of  the  South  and  West  of  Ireland  have  always  been 
with  the  type  of  religion  found  in  the  South  and  West  of 
Europe.  New  England,  Old  England,  Scotland,  Wales, 
and  the  Protestant  cantons  of  Switzerland,  together  with 
Norway  and  Sweden,  are  substantially  at  one  in  their 
sabbath  ideas.  We  may  add,  also,  the  colonial  depend- 
encies of  Old  England,  —  consisting  of  the  Protestant 
parts  of  Canada,  New  Zealand,  and  Australia.  Outside  the 
territory  represented  by  these  names,  the  views  held  of 
the  sabbath  institution  are  either  very  indefinite,  or  very 
definitely  hostile  to  what  we  consider  to  be  the  Biblical 
views.  Every  one  knows  that  a  Parisian  Sunday  is  a  day 
of  gayety  for  the  rich,  a  day  of  toil  for  the  poor ;  and 
that  which  is  true  of  Paris  is  substantially  true  of  the 
whole  of  France.  Now,  as  we  have  not  here  in  the  United 
States  a  numerically  large  French  population,  it  may  not 
seem  to  be  of  very  great  moment  to  us  to  take  special  note 
of  what  Sunday  is  in  France.     That,  however,  is  a  very 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.    319 

narrow  view  of  the  case.  What  American,  traveUing  in 
Europe,  does  not  go  to  Paris  ?  Is  it  possible  for  our 
young  men  and  women  to  visit  that  gay  and  brilliant  city, 
or  to  stay  there  for  a  season  for  educational  purposes, 
without  receiving  impressions  altogether  alien  from  those 
sabbath  ideas  which  belong  to  the  strictly  Protestant  na- 
tions of  Christendom  ?  We  know  that  young  men  and 
women  are  naturally  averse  to  that  wholesome  restraint 
which  not  only  in  religion,  but  in  every  thing,  is  essential  to 
culture.  Would  it  not  be  pleasanter  for  us  to  have  some- 
thing like  that  which  is  found  on  the  Continent  of  Europe, 
—  to  deck  ourselves  in  all  the  gay  livery  of  a  Parisian 
pleasure-seeker,  rather  than  to  wear  the  hodden  gray  of  a 
New-England  Puritan  }  And  not  the  young  people  alone, 
but  their  fathers  and  mothers,  are  in  danger  of  allowing 
themselves  to  be  persuaded  that  there  is  something  rea- 
sonable in  this,  —  that  a  more  diversified  Sunday  is  essen- 
tial, specially  for  the  young  people.  Now,  it  is  no  secret 
that  there  is  no  country  in  the  world  where  children  have 
so  much  influence  over  their  parents  as  in  this.  I  pre- 
sume on  the  principle  of  development  it  is  assumed  that 
the  young  of  the  rising  generation  must  necessarily  be 
wiser  and  better  than  the  old  of  the  generation  that  is 
passing  away.  Anyway,  the  fact  remains,  that  that  which 
the  children  strongly  desire,  their  parents  are  strongly 
inclined  to  grant  ;  and  "  how  to  train  up  a  parent  in  the 
way  he  should  go,"  is  the  assiduous  care  of  the  younger 
members  of  too  many  of  our  households.  The  effect  on 
the  minds  of  many  of  our  young  people,  of  going  to  Euroj^e, 
is  not  seldom  to  create  the  impression  that  our  methods  of 
spending  sabbath-time  are  not  founded  on  convictions,  but 
on  mere  prejudices  arising  from  the  older  days  when  our 
New-England  people  were  removed  far  off  from  the  rest  of 
the  civilized  world.  Is  it  not  that  the  growing  want  of 
reverence  for  the  sabbath  as  a  divine  institute  is,  among 


320  SA  BBA  TH  ESS  A  VS. 

the  moneyed  classes  of  society,  no  little  attributable  to  im- 
pressions received  in  that  gay  and  gilded  Paris,  and  in 
other  less  ornate  but  not  less  irreligious  European  cities  ? 
But  surely,  to  religious  Americans,  Paris  ought  to  be  a 
warning,  not  an  example.  In  the  memoir  of  the  Rev. 
Robert  McCheyne  we  meet  with  this  passage  :  "  Alas  ! 
poor  Paris  knows  no  sabbath  :  all  the  shops  are  open,  and 
all  the  inhabitants  are  on  the  wing  in  search  of  pleasures, 
—  pleasures  that  perish  in  the  using.  I  thought  of  Baby- 
lon and  Sodom  as  I  passed  through  the  crowd.  I  cannot 
tell  how  I  longed  for  the  peace  of  the  Scottish  sabbath. 
There  is  a  place  in  Paris  called  the  Champs  Elysees,  or 
plains  of  heaven,  a  beautiful  place,  with  trees  and  gardens. 
We  have  to  cross  it  in  passing  to  the  Protestant  Church. 
It  is  the  chief  scene  of  their  sabbath  desecration,  and  an 
awful  scene  it  is.  Oh  !  thought  I,  if  this  is  the  heaven  a 
Parisian  loves,  he  will  never  enjoy  the  pure  heaven  that 
is  above."  If  we  cross  into  Belgium,  we  find  that  the 
Sunday  wears  pretty  much  the  same  aspect  as  in  France. 
I  have  seen  the  workmen  working  there  till  four  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon,  and  working  at  any  thing  and  every 
thing.  The  evening  is  more  of  a  holiday  for  them  than 
most  other  days  ;  but,  generally  speaking,  the  women  and 
children  go  to  church,  while  the  men  toil  on  Sunday  as 
on  Monday.  In  the  country-districts,  the  women  are  in 
the  fields  with  the  men,  — toiling  at  hard  labor  every  day 
of  every  week,  snatching  an  hour  at  early  morn  or  at 
noon  for  an  attendance  at  church. 

In  Switzerland,  and  specially  in  the  Protestant  can- 
tons, we  have  the  most  pleasing  illustrations  of  sabbath 
consecration  of  time  to  be  found  anywhere  in  Europe. 
There  is  no  city  where  a  New-Englander  might  spend  a 
Sunday  with  less  to  trouble  his  spirit  than  in  Geneva. 
Calvin's  influence  remains  there  still. 

M.  Alexander  Lombard,  a  retired  banker  of  Geneva,  is 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     32 1 

the  president  of  an  international  sabbath-observance  so- 
ciety which  is  doing  excellent  service  in  Europe  towards 
calling  back  the  minds  of  men  to  the  loss  they  have  sus- 
tained in  desecrating  the  sabbath  idea.  Quite  recently  a 
congress  has  been  held,  attended  by  delegates  from  all 
parts  of  Europe.  In  a  previous  congress,  in  1876,  at 
which  four  hundred  and  forty  brethren,  delegates  from 
all  European  countries,  were  present,  the  following  sim- 
ple but  all-sufficient  resolution  was  adopted  :  *'  The  prin- 
ciple of  an  international  confederation  for  the  revival  in 
Europe  of  reverence  for  and  observance  of  the  Lord's 
Day  upon  the  basis  of  Holy  Scripture,  as  printed  on  the 
papers  of  the  congress,  is  accepted."  The  texts  of  Scrip- 
ture quoted,  and  on  which  the  confederation  was  based, 
are  these  three,  —  giving  a  broad,  simple,  yet  adequate 
base  on  which  to  build  up  right  conduct  on  this  ques- 
tion :  — 

**  God  blessed  the  seventh  day,  and  sanctified  it,"  that 
defining  the  weekly  recurrence  of  the  sabbath. 

"  Remember  that  thou  keep  holy  the  sabbath  day," 
that  defining  the  spirit  in  which  the  day  should  be  cele- 
brated. 

**The  sabbath  was  made  for  man,''  that  defining  the 
area  over  which  the  blessing  extended  :  wherever  there 
is  a  man,  there  is  a  sabbath  necessity. 

May  that  confederation  increase  in  influence  until 
Europe  shall  once  again  enjoy  her  sabbaths ! 

But  what  of  Germany  in  regard  to  this  question } 
Probably  her  population,  thronging  the  cities  of  the  ex- 
pansive and  fertile  West,  will  exercise  here  an  influence 
for  good  or  evil  in  many  things,  the  magnitude  of  which  is 
hardly  yet  perceived  even  by  the  men  of  keenest  vision. 
The  vote  of  our  German  population  will,  I  fear,  be  ad- 
verse to  any  thing  like  a  perpetuation  of  the  old  New- 
England  ideas  of  the  sabbath.     We   have  only  to  visit 


322  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

Cincinnati,  Milwaukee,  Chicago,  and  other  cities,  to  see 
in  what  direction  things  are  moving.  On  Sunday,  Cin- 
cinnati is  httle  else  than  a  huge  beer-garden  rapidly  on  its 
way  to  become  a  huge  bear-garden. 

I  was  in  Chicago  in  July,  occupying  the  pulpit  of  the 
Second  Presbyterian  Church  for  three  Sundays.  The 
First  Presbyterian  Church  is  within  a  few  hundred  yards. 
Other  influential  churches  are  in  that  immediate  neigh- 
borhood. But  the  whole  of  them  together  are  not  strong 
enough  to  prevent  the  opening  of  a  huge  beer-hall  and 
garden  close  to  their  very  doors.  This,  be  it  remarked, 
in  what  is  considered  the  most  respectable  part  of  the 
city,  where  some  of  the  wealthiest  Chicago  merchants 
live.  This  beer  hall  and  garden  is  open  every  day  of  the 
week,  but  it  seems  to  be  particularly  open  on  Sundays. 
On  the  Sunday  in  July  to  which  I  refer,  it  seemed  to  have 
a  patronage  far  in  excess  of  the  most  popular  churches. 
And  '*  if  these  things  be  done  in  the  green  tree,  what  shall 
be  done  in  the  dry  } "  If  they  be  done  in  the  very  teeth 
of  the  most  influential  religious  men  of  a  city,  —  what  will 
they  do  in  those  populous  parts  where  the  poorer  men  and 
women  congregate,  and  from  whence  too  often  churches 
emigrate  t 

Germany  is  great  in  many  things,  —  great  in  military 
power,  great  in  the  ability  of  plodding  perseverance,  great 
in  theories  for  the  regeneration  and  re-organization  of  so- 
ciety on  bases  of  such  a  general  involvement  that  the  idle 
man  shall  be  as  well-to-do  as  the  industrious  man ;  and 
the  fool  shall  be  no  worse  off  than  the  wise  man  ;  and  the 
man  of  no  character  shall  not  be  allowed  to  be  oppressed 
by  the  man  of  reputation.  She  is  great  in  philosophies 
and  in  criticisms,  the  most  critical  nation  on  earth,  noth- 
ing if  not  critical.  The  most  divided  nation  on  the  Con- 
tinent of  Europe,  she  has  always  been  great  at  theories 
of  unity ;  the  most  oppressed  by  military  despotisms,  she 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.      323 

has  always  been  fruitful  of  theories  of  freedom  for  man- 
kind. But  though  Germany  has  been,  in  her  northern 
parts  at  any  rate,  strongly  Protestant,  yet  her  Protestant- 
ism has  never  had  full  liberty  to  be  thoroughly  Biblical. 
She  has  produced  one  Luther  —  but  never  two.  The  ef- 
fort seems  to  have  cost  her  almost  all  her  religious  vitality. 
Now,  there  are  many  people  who  think  that  Germany  is 
a  universal  teacher,  —  that  in  every  thing  she  is  mentally 
first.  There  is  some  truth  in  this,  but  much  untruth. 
She  has  produced  many  great  philosophers,  some  great 
poets,  and  a  host  of  great  critics.  In  the  matter  of  the 
criticism  of  the  letter  of  Scripture,  and  criticism  of  every 
thing  else,  she  stands  without  a  peer.  Destructiveness 
rather  than  constructiveness,  analysis  rather  than  syn- 
thesis, seems  to  be  the  predominant  tendency  of  the  Ger- 
man scholastic  mind.  I  doubt  whether  it  can  be  fairly 
averred  that  Germany  has  produced  many  really  great 
theologians,  such  as  can  compare  with  those  belonging  to 
England,  Scotland,  and  the  United  States.  The  sermons 
which  have  been  published  in  Germany,  and  in  England 
as  coming  from  Germany,  are  remarkably  poor.  They  are 
altogether  destitute  of  that  living,  throbbing  vitality  which 
belongs  to  the  sermons  of  the  three  countries  already 
named.  More  than  any  other  country  Germany  seems  to 
me  an  illustration  of  the  warning  given  in  St.  Paul's  words, 
''The  letter  killethy  But  what  has  Germany  to  teach 
New  England  in  either  politics  or  theology  .?  Really  noth- 
ing. Since  Luther's  time  she  seems  to  have  been  singu- 
larly destitute  of  what  in  Scripture  is  called  ''vision,"  — 
vision  as  distinct  from  that  intelligence  which  comes  of 
mental  culture.  "Where  there  is  no  vision,  the  people 
perish."  In  the  religious  realm  of  things,  Germany  is 
much  more  of  a  warning  than  an  example.  In  an  article 
which  appeared  in  the  "  London  Times  "  newspaper  of 
Jan.  4,  1877,  Dr.  Peterman,  a  very  eminent  German,  says, 


324  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

"  In  England,  Sunday  is  kept  as  a  day  for  God  and  man, 
and  above  all  for  the  workman.  Oh  that  our  poor  mis- 
guided socialists  would  come  to  a  place  like  London,  in 
order  to  see  how  honestly,  industriously,  punctually,  vig- 
orously, and  orderly,  work  is  carried  on  there  throughout 
the  week  !  then  on  Sunday  comes  the  rest." 

Now,  I  might  quote  from  the  experiences  which  all 
travellers  have  had  of  German,  French,  and  Italian  Sun- 
days, as  testimony  to  this  one  all-inclusive  fact :  that  prac- 
tically the  sabbath  has  gone  from  those  countries,  and 
that  their  people  grow  up  without  any  idea  or  thought  of 
the  necessity  to  godliness  of  the  separation  and  elevation 
of  every  seventh  day.  There  is  really  very  little  to  choose 
between  Germany,  France,  and  Italy,  in  regard  to  the 
matter  of  sabbath  observance.  When  emigrants  from 
these  countries  come  hither,  they  necessarily  bring  their 
anti-sabbatism  with  them.  They  swell  that  great  army 
whose  influence  is  in  direct  negation  of  all  that  belongs  to 
the  religious  institutions  of  New  England.  It  is  a  serious 
thing  for  the  Christian  institutions  of  this  country,  that 
they  have  to  meet  and  conquer,  or  be  conquered  by,  these 
men  and  women  nurtured  in  ideas  and  under  examples  so 
foreign  to  the  ideas  and  examples  of  the  old  citizenship  of 
America.  It  they  are  allowed  quietly  to  introduce  and 
get  established  their  anti-sabbath  customs,  on  the  simple 
ground  of  being  foreigners,  it  will  not  be  long  before 
every  theatre  in  America  will  reap  its  largest  harvests  on 
Sunday  nights.  We  are  moving  in  that  direction  so  rap- 
idly as  to  be  almost  within  the  circle  of  probability  that, 
ere  many  winters  have  passed,  not  even  Boston  will  be 
able  to  hold  her  own  against  the  foreigner.  For  myself, 
foreigner  though  I  be,  so  far  as  place  of  birth  and  past  life 
is  concerned,  yet  I  feel  humiliated,  not  to  say  indignant, 
when  I  see  with  what  ease  the  descendants  of  those  old 
:  sturdy  men  who,  as  Macaulay  says,  were  among  the  most 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     325 

remarkable  that  England  ever  produced,  will  let  go  those 
pure  ideas  and  purity-generating  institutions  on  which 
their  ancestors  set  so  high  a  value  that  they  deemed  any 
sacrifice  for  their  defence  small.  I  can  easily  forgive  a 
Frenchman,  an  Italian,  a  German,  if,  when  he  becomes 
an  American  citizen,  he  is  found  on  the-  inhuman  and 
undivine  side  of  religious  questions.  When,  in  many  Con- 
tinental cities,  for  every  forty  persons  who  go  to  church 
on  Sundays  there  are  a  thousand  who  go  to  the  Sunday- 
theatre,  what  can  you  expect }  A  very  large  proportion 
of  the  people  who  come  here  from  the  Continent  of  Europe 
have  had  no  religious  training.  German  rationalism  and 
French  Voltairism  have  done  their  work.  But  New  Eng- 
land has  not  been  desolated  by  the  one,  nor  devastated  by 
the  other.  If  the  sons  and  daughters  of  New  England 
are  no  better  specimens  of  religious  men  and  women  than 
are  those  whose  religious  birthright  has  been  sold  for  some 
paltry  mess  of  rationalistic  pottage,  —  then,  I  say,  shame 
upon  them  !  Allowing  that  in  the  generations  past  there 
was  too  much  of  rigidity  and  severity  in  the  working-out  of 
the  sabbath-idea,  yet  I  ask  you  to  take  ten  thousand  speci- 
mens of  the  men  and  women  of  New  England,  who  were 
nurtured  under  that  severity  and  rigidity,  and  ten  thousand 
specimens  of  Frenchmen  or  Germans,  to  whom  Sunday 
has  been  any  thing  but  a  sabbath,  and  judge  by  the  results 
on  manhood  and  womanhood  as  to  which  extreme  (if  we 
are  obliged  to  adopt  either)  is  most  harmful.  Even  the 
physical  results  are  noteworthy.  Dr.  Guthrie,  writing  of 
England  and  Scotland,  says,  "  It  is  certain  that  the  for- 
eigner is  a  much  less  efficient  workman  than  our  laborers  : 
as  an  English  company  lately  found,  who  were  engaged  in 
constructing  a  railway  in  France,  and  found  it  cheaper 
to  carry  English  navvies  across  the  Channel,  and  pay  them 
five  shillings  a  day,  than  to  employ  Frenchmen  at  half  the 
wages."     But   the  mental  and  moral  difference,  between 


326 


SABBA  TH  ESSA  YS. 


sabbath-observing  nations  and  sabbath  non-observing  na- 
tions is  even  more  striking.  There  is  no  such  general 
education  among  the  French  and  German  common  people 
as  is  found  in  New  England.  The  masses  in  both  coun- 
tries are  utterly  neglected.  And  as  to  morals  we  will,  for 
brevity,  take  one  kind  of  evidence  alone,  which  will  suf- 
•fice.  It  is  not  an  agreeable  kind  of  evidence,  but  that  we 
cannot  help.  We  will  take  six  cities,  and  on  inquiry  we 
find  that  a  few  years  since  the  percentage  of  illegitimate 
births  in  a  single  year  in  London  was  4  per  cent ;  in  Paris, 
34  per  cent  ;  in  Brussels,  34  per  cent  ;  in  Monaco,  49  per 
cent ;  in  Vienna,  54  per  cent ;  in  Rome,  72  per  cent.^ 

As  to  the  social  results,  —  the  results  to  the  good  order 
of  society,  its  peace  and  quietude,  —  Count  Montalembert, 
one  of  the  most  eminent  French  statesmen,  once  wrote, 
**  Men  are  surprised  sometimes  by  the  ease  with  which 
the  immense  city  of  London  is  kept  in  order  by  a  garrison 
of  three  small  battalions  and  two  squadrons  ;  while  to  con- 
trol the  capital  of  France,  which  is  half  the  size,  forty 
thousand  troops  of  the  line  and  sixty  thousand  national 
guards  are  necessary.  But  the  stranger  who  arrives  in 
London  on  a  Sunday  morning,  when  he  sees  every  thing 
of  commerce  suspended  in  that  gigantic  capital  in  obe- 
dience to  God ;  when  in  the  centre  of  that  colossal  busi- 
ness he  finds  silence  and  repose  scarcely  interrupted  by 
the  bells  which  call  to  prayer,  and  by  the  immense  crowds 


1  The  Examiner  (London)  of  October,  li 
latest  moral  statistics  obtainable  :  — 


gives   the  following  statistics,  the 


City. 

Births. 

Legitimate. 

Illegitimate. 

London     . 

75,097 

19,921 

3,448 

8,821 
1,215 

3,203 
9,707 
1.833 
1,762 
10,360 
3,160 

Paris 

Brussels         

Vienna ....•• 

Rome 

THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     327 

on  their  way  to  church,  —  then  his  astonishment  ceases. 
He  understands  that  there  is  another  curb  for  a  Christian 
people  besides  that  made  by  bayonets,  and  that,  where  the 
law  of  God  is  fulfilled  with  such  a  solemn  submissiveness, 
God  himself,  if  I  dare  use  the  words,  charges  himself  with 
the  police  arrangements." 

Now,  when  foreigners  themselves  cannot  withhold  ex- 
pressions such  as  these  as  they  see  the  difference  between 
society  in  sabbath-keeping  countries  and  society  in  coun- 
tries where  the  sabbath  light  is  extinguished,  — does  it  not 
indicate  to  us  in  what  direction  our  duty  and  interest  lie  } 
Not  in  trying  to  find  some  position  of  compromise  be- 
tween the  Biblical  ideas  and  that  anti-sabbatic  position 
occupied  by  Germany,  France,  and  other  European  nation- 
alities ;  but  in  working  into  its  most  benevolent  expres- 
sion the  Bible  principle,  so  that,  while  the  sabbath  rest 
loses  none  of  its  sanctity,  it  yet  shall  become  more  and 
more  desirable  until  the  whole  people  shall  be  found  men- 
tally and  heartily  converted  to  the  true  sabbatic  principle 
and  practice.  We  need  not  fear  that  the  old  rigidity  will 
return  ;  but  we  had  better  have  that  ajid  a  sabbath,  than 
be  without  it  and  have  no  sabbath.  We  need  not  fear 
that  the  Puritan  sabbath  will  be  back  upon  us.  We  do 
not  want  the  tree  :  we  want  the  fruit.  And  yet,  if  we  are 
to  have  the  fruit,  we  shall  hardly  be  likely  to  get  it  by 
cutting  down  the  tree.  But,  as  all  the  finest  and  sweet- 
est fruits  in  our  gardens  have  come  from  care  and  culture 
of  once  sour  fruits,  so  the  brightest,  purest,  sweetest  sab- 
bath that  ever  dawned  on  toiling  men  will  come,  I  verily 
believe,  not  from  Germany,  not  from  Italy,  not  from 
France,  but  from  the  steady  care  for  and  culture  of  that 
old  Puritan  sabbath,  that  once  (according  to  the  reports  of 
those  who  had  no  experience  of  it)  was  sour.  On  this 
sabbath-theme  (I  do  not  like  to  call  it  a  question)  the  New- 
Englander  has  a  mission  to  the  man  of  the  Old  World. 


328  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

Let  New  England  stand  resolute  and  determined  in  the 
old  ideas,  —  modernized  it  may  be,  expanded,  ripened,  but 
in  substance  the  same  as  those  of  the  fathers,  —  let  her 
hold  to  the  Book,  the  Day,  the  Church,  the  School:  her 
moral  and  intellectual  supremacy  in  the  land  will  re- 
main. Her  numerical  supremacy  has  gone.  That  kind  of 
supremacy  is  at  best  very  inferior.  Englishmen,  numeri- 
cally, are  but  one-fiftieth  of  the  British  Empire,  and  yet 
they  have  the  supremacy.  And  so  the  time  may  come 
when  the  population  of  New  England  shall  be  but  one- 
fiftieth  of  the  population  of  these  United  States,  and  yet 
it  may  still  be  the  Jiead  of  the  body  ;  but  never  by  adopt- 
ing German  ideas  in  regard  to  the  sabbath  or  the  Bible, 
or  other  kindred  themes.  Always  and  ever,  the  purest 
ideas  are  not  only  the  best,  but  the  strongest.  These 
brethren  from  foreign  lands  need  to  be  shown  that  physi- 
cally, mentally,  and  spiritually,  a  man  is  more  a  man,  even 
for  this  world,  by  having  a  sabbath.  And  is  it  not  the 
great  levelling  day  of  the  week,  —  but  a  day  of  levelling  up, 
—  when  the  master  is  no  longer  master,  the  servant  no 
longer  servant,  the  toiler  no  longer  driven  by  stern  neces- 
sity ;  each  and  every  man  on  that  day  his  own,  his  fami- 
ly s,  and  God's?  The  pure  manhood  of  man  never  shines 
so  purely  as  when  the  sabbath  comes,  and  for  twenty-four 
hours  dissolves  the  inter-relations  of  life  established  by 
commerce,  and  says  to  the  man.  To-day  you  are  simply 
a  man  among  men — free  to  worship  God. 

I  presume  that  our  friends  who  want  museums,  picture- 
galleries,  and  other  such  places,  open  on  Sunday,  think 
that  thus  Sunday  can  be  made  a  little  less  objectionable  to 
the  foreigner.  I  have  no  doubt  as  to  their  meaning  well 
by  these  expedients,  urged,  as  we  sometimes  hear,  to  keep 
the  drinking-men  out  of  the  saloons.  Personally,  I  have 
made  too  many  observations  and  inquiries,  seen  and  heard 
too  much  on  the  Continent  of  Europe  and  in  England, 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.      329 

to  believe  even  for  the  space  of  a  second,  that  seeing 
Egyptian  mummies,  and  stuffed  monkeys,  or  even  very 
fine  works  of  art,  in  art-galleries,  will  ever  do  any  thing  in 
that  direction.  In  England  we  have  been  successful  so 
far  in  keeping  all  our  public  institutions  closed  on  the 
Sunday, — with  one  exception.  There  is  a  famous  library 
in  the  town  of  Birmingham  which  was  opened  a  few  years 
since.  I  was  curious  to  know  what  class  of  readers  fre- 
quented it,  and  what  class  of  books  was  taken  out  on 
Sunday.  I  was  informed  that  the  most  inferior  books  in 
the  library  were  invariably  called  for  on  Sundays.  Our 
brethren,  who  believe  that  some  indefinite  good  is  to  come 
to  somebody  from  keeping  public,  state,  and  national  mu- 
seums open  on  Sunday,  have  only  to  visit  the  countries 
where  none  of  them  are  shut,  have  only  to  observe  the 
kind  of  pictures  which  are  most  popular  with  the  Sunday 
visitors,  to  have  their  faith  shaken,  and  the  ardor  of  their 
zeal  cooled.  My  firmly-rooted  belief  is  that  it  is  not  in 
the  spirit  of  weak  compromise  on  this,  or  any  question, 
that  strength  lies.  Our  influence  over  the  foreign  popula- 
tion will  not  be  in  proportion  to  our  likeness  to  them,  but 
in  the  ratio  of  our  elevation  above  them.  The  great  reason 
why  America  is  more  attractive  to  them  than  France  or 
Germany  or  Italy  is,  that  she  is  different  from  all ;  and 
the  difference  is  a  difference  of  elevation.  So  it  must  be 
on  this  sabbath  question.  We  must  have  a  holier,  a 
purer,  a  more  beneficent  sabbath,  than  Germany  or  France 
has,  if  we  would  have  a  brighter  and  cheerier  sabbath. 
We  don't  want  mere  gayety.  Gayety  belongs  to  nations 
that  are  frivolous  because  at  heart  they  are  sad.  How- 
ever many  your  jets  of  gas,  you  can  never  multiply  them 
into  sunlight.  We  want  the  real  thing,  —  the  cheeriness 
which  comes  from  a  heart  and  conscience  at  rest ;  the 
bloom  which  indicates  health;  not  paint.  This  part  of 
the  great  theme,  "  the  sabbath  and  our  foreign  popula- 


3  30  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

tion,"  is  not   the   least  important  branch  by  any  means 
when  we  remember  how  numerous  that  foreign  population 
is.     I  suppose  that  every  third  man  you  meet  in  America 
is  a  foreigner.     It  would  only  be  tedious  to  go  into  statisti- 
cal details.     But  as  figures  do  not,  and  can  not,  lie  or  exag- 
gerate (except  at  political  elections),  it  may  help  us  to  see 
the  importance  of  this  part  of  this  variously-related  theme, 
if  we  take  this  State  of  Massachusetts  and  the  State  of 
New  York,  and  ask  what  is  the  proportion  between  native 
and   foreign.     The    census    of  1870  for  New-York  State 
gives    the   native  population  at  3,244,406;   foreign  born, 
1^13^,353;  having  foreign  father  and  mother,  2,043,112. 
In  Massachusetts  the  total  native  population,  1,104,032; 
foreign  born,  353,319;  having  foreign  father  and  mother, 
600,000.     It  is  difficult  to  estimate  just  what  proportion  of 
these  of  foreign  parentage  are  naturally  inclined  to  uphold 
the  sabbath  as  a  divine  institution  ;  who  are  with  us,  and 
not  against  us.     I  presume  that  not  more  than  one-third. 
How  are  we  to  regard  the  other  two-thirds  }     Not  as  ene- 
mies —  that  be  far  from  us  !  —  but  as  people  who  7ieed  in- 
structiojt  ill  order  to  couversioii.     For  it  needs  no  discus- 
sion, that  either  the  sabbath  idea  must  conquer  them,  or 
they  it.     Is  New  England  religiously  strong  enough  and 
ardent  enough  to  make  her  influence  felt  on  this  subject 
all  over  this  continent .?     She  has  an  advantage  over  any 
other  part  of  the  land  in  regard  to  moral  and  religious 
reforms.     Her  record  is  her  advantage.     She  knows,  and 
we  all  know,  that  to  secularize  the  Lord's  Day  is  an  object 
that  men  are  driving  at  (as  Dr.  Guthrie  once  put  it)  under 
cover  of  regard  to  the  interests  of  the  poor.     Care  for  the 
poor  !  a  wretched  pretence  on  the  part  of  many  who  make 
it,  and  a  delusion  in  all  who  believe  it.     We  have  to  make 
it  evident,  that,  let  a  breach  be  once  made,  and  work,  as  on 
the  Continent,  will  rush  in  at  the  back  of  play  ;  and  that, 
in  the  end,  seven  days'  labor  will  bring  no  higher  wages 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.      33 1 

than  are  now  earned  by  six  ;  that  it  is  not  in  those  Popish 
or  Protestant  countries  where  this  day  is  given  up  to 
business  or  pleasure,  but  here  and  in  England,  in  the  two 
countries  where  it  stops  the  wheels  of  labor,  closes  thea- 
tres, and  opens  churches,  that  workmen  can  earn  the 
largest  wages,  enjoy  the  greatest  freedom,  and  dwell  in  the 
happiest  homes  ;  that,  in  every  country  where  it  is  hon- 
ored, the  sabbath  is  the  palladium  of  liberty  and  the  ark 
of  religion  ;  that  a  nation  trained  through  its  devout  ob- 
servance to  the  knowledge  of  God  and  practice  of  piety 
will  neither  aspire  to  be  tyrants,  nor  submit  to  be  slaves. 


332  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


CORPORATIONS  AND   THE  SABBATH. 

BY   REV.    WILLARD    F.    MALLALIEU,    D.D.,    OF   CHELSEA. 

In  every  effort  put  forth  by  the  real  friends  of  moral- 
ity and  religion  to  conserve  the  best  interests  of  society,  it 
is  of  the  first  importance  that  they  should  properly  esti- 
mate the  actual  condition  of  affairs. 

The  antediluvian  sinners  are  all  dead.  Not  one  of  the 
wicked  Egyptians  of  the  time  of  the  exodus  has  troubled 
the  earth  for  a  long  time.  The  persecutors  of  the  apos- 
tles and  the  murderers  of  Christ  have  all  passed  away. 
They  may  serve  as  examples,  in  some  sort,  and  their  fate 
may  warn  others  of  the  danger  of  sin  ;  but,  practically, 
we  have  not  much  to  do  with  them.  Our  difficulties  are 
peculiar  to  the  times  in  which  we  live,  and  our  sinners 
are  associated  with  us  in  the  most  intimate  relations  of 
life. 

It  is  perfectly  obvious  that  the  civilization  of  the  last 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  altogether  different  from 
that  of  any  preceding  epoch.  The  world  itself  seems  to 
have  grown  smaller  year  by  year,  and  unremitting  explo- 
rations and  multiplied  discoveries  have  removed  the  dark- 
ness which  for  centuries  had  enshrouded  a  large  propor- 
tion of  the  earth.  The  human  race,  during  the  lifetime  of 
men  not  far  past  the  meridian,  has  made  more  rapid  ad- 
vances, and  achieved  greater  victories  in  the  conflict  of 
mind  with  matter,  than  in  the  previous  twenty  centuries. 
All  the  world,  and  especially  all  Christendom,  is  in  a 
condition  of  mental  excitation.  The  tides  of  commerce 
ebb  and  flow  with  ceaseless  energy.  Vast  bodies  of  men 
in  inexplicable  migrations  are  passing  from  continent  to 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.      333 

continent.  There  is  scarcely  a  stone  of  the  old  founda- 
tions upon  which  society  has  rested,  that  is  not  rudely  or 
maliciously  assailed.  Mount  Sinai  and  the  Rock  of  Ages 
are  not  secure  from  attack.  Even  the  Almighty  is  elimi- 
nated from  the  universe  in  the  thought  of  vain  men,  puffed 
up  with  much  or  little  science. 

Amid  such  developments  as  these,  and  others  not  less 
momentous  and  threatening,  the  holy  sabbath,  God's  day, 
confronts  a  wicked,  restless  world. 

Like  every  other  law  of  the  Decalogue,  the  Fourth  Com- 
mandment is  adapted  to  the  needs  of  all  men,  and  it  is  of 
universal  and  perpetual  obligation.  It  never  has  been 
abrogated,  and  never  will  be  as  long  as  man  dwells  on  the 
face  of  the  earth.  The  obligation  to  keep  holy  the  sab- 
bath rests  simply  and  solely  upon  the  plain,  absolute  com- 
mand of  God,  that  command  being  designed  to  promote 
man's  highest  physical,  mental,  and  spiritual  welfare. 

This  law,  being  binding  upon  individuals,  is  also  binding 
upon  all  aggregations  of  individuals  :  hence  it  is  binding 
upon  corporations. 

It  is  a  feature,  and  a  very  pronounced  feature,  of  modern 
civilization,  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  actively-employed 
capital  is  held  by  corporations,  or  organized  companies. 
The  facts  of  our  own  country  apply  equally  to  other  civil- 
ized countries.  The  vast  wealth  concentrated  in  our  rail- 
roads and  other  means  of  intercommunication  is  owned 
and  controlled  by  corporations.  The  same  is  true  of  most 
of  our  extensive  and  rapidly  increasing  manufactories. 
Even  many  of  the  vast  farms  of  the  West  are  owned  and 
operated  by  corporations. 

One  of  the  notorious  peculiarities  of  all  corporations  is 
the  almost  universal  assumption  that  the  individuals  com- 
posing them  have  no  personal  responsibility  for  the  good 
or  evil  which  may  result  from  corporate  action. 

Corporations  may  grind  the  face  of  the  poor,  and  defraud 


3  34  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

the  laborer,  and  do  as  many  outrageous  things  as  they 
deem  profitable  ;  and  yet  all  the  individual  corporators 
will  wash  their  hands  of  any  responsibility. 

The  laws  of  God  and  man  may  be  violated  with  equal 
recklessness  by  corporations  ;  and  all  the  time  those  pro- 
fessing to  be  moral  and  upright,  if  not  Christian,  will  com- 
placently pocket  the  profits  of  law-breaking. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  most  of  our  corporations  do  not 
openly  and  habitually  violate  the  sabbath.  Our  shops  and 
factories  of  all  kinds  remain  closed  on  the  sabbath.  If 
any  work  be  done,  it  is  the  work  of  repairing,  which  is 
done  by  a  very  few,  and  without  noise  or  disturbance  of 
any  kind.  In  most  cases,  even  these  repairs  could  be 
done  on  week-days  or  nights,  and  hence  are  unnecessary 
and  in  violation  of  the  law  of  God. 

The  great  sabbath-breaking  corporations  of  the  coun- 
try are  those  controlling  the  railroads  and  steamboats. 

Boston  and  Massachusetts  may  serve  as  an  example  of 
the  manner  in  which  the  sabbath  is  desecrated  all  over  the 
country. 

Twenty-five  years  ago  such  a  thing  as  a  Sunday  steam- 
boat-excursion was  unknown  ;  but  now,  all  through  the 
summer  months,  the  harbor  of  Boston  is  alive  with  excur- 
sions. The  last  summer  was  worse  in  this  regard  than 
any  that  has  preceded  it,  and  the  next  threatens  to  be 
worse  than  this. 

The  churches  are  shut,  or  only  open  a  half-day ;  min- 
isters are  away,  the  saints  are  scattered  or  asleep,  and 
the  Devil  holds  high  carnival.  Press  and  pulpit  are  alike 
silent  on  the  open  and  shameless  violation  of  the  laws  of 
God  and  men  ;  and  some  go  so  far  in  their  mawkish  sym- 
pathy as  mildly  to  apologize  for  all  this  wickedness.  So 
much  for  the  religious  press  and  the  pulpit.  The  secu- 
lar press  is  utterly  silent,  or  approves  of  the  sabbath  dese- 
cration. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     335 

But  the  railroads  centring  in  Boston  are  worse,  if  possi- 
ble, than  the  steamboats.  Twenty-five  years  ago  the  run- 
ning of  a  train  of  cars  for  any  purpose  was  a  thing  to  be 
remarked ;  but  now  there  is  not  an  exception  to  the  dese- 
cration of  the  sabbath  by  any  road.  Not  only  are  passen- 
ger-trains run  on  Sunday,  but  also  freight,  and  these,  in 
some  instances,  connecting  with  steamboats,  as  is  notably 
the  case  with  some  of  the  lines  running  to  New  York. 

This  deplorable  condition  of  affairs  is  growing  worse 
and  worse  from  year  to  year ;  and  from  present  indications 
these  great  corporations  will  in  the  future  as  thoroughly 
ignore  the  existence  of  the  sabbath  as  though  there  were 
none. 

Along  the  same  line  of  operations  we  see  that  the  horse- 
railroads,  especially  in  the  summer-time,  make  the  sabbath 
their  harvest-day.  Then  it  is  that  they  are  thronged  by 
pleasure-seekers  and  Sunday  visitors,  who  are  thoroughly 
careless  of  the  sabbath.  These  roads  are  run,  not  as  a 
matter  of  necessity  or  mercy,  but  simply  and  solely  for  the 
money  that  is  to  be  made. 

These  corporations,  controlling  the  steamboats,  steam- 
railroads,  and  horse-railroads,  are  the  great,  shameless, 
audacious,  defiant  leaders  in  the  sin  of  public  sabbath- 
breaking. 

The  evil  consequences  of  this  sabbath  violation  are 
threefold :  — 

I.  First,  there  is  involved  the  necessity  of  the  employ- 
ment of  vast  numbers  of  men  to  carry  on  the  work  that 
must  be  performed.  Tens  of  thousands  of  men  are  em- 
ployed by  these  corporations  every  sabbath ;  and  it  is 
almost  an  impossible  thing  for  any  man  habitually  to  vio- 
late the  law  of  God  in  the  desecration  of  the  sabbath,  and 
still  maintain  a  high  standard  of  morality.  The  universal 
experience  and  observation  of  many  years  in  this  connec- 
tion establish  the  fact  that  the  character  of  workmen  will 


336  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

deteriorate  in  morals  in  proportion  as  they  neglect  the 
sabbath.  The  men  themselves  may,  or  may  not,  be  con- 
scious —  probably  they  are  not  —  of  the  effect  produced  ; 
but  still  it  is  none  the  less  certain  and  destructive.  And 
they  seem  to  be  equally  unconscious  of  the  fact  that  the 
tendency  of  late  years  has  been  to  keep  the  wages  of  labor- 
ing-men down  to  the  very  lowest  point  of  comfortable  sup- 
port ;  and  in  many  cases  they  have  been  reduced  so  low 
that  only  with  the  utmost  exertion  could  the  necessaries 
of  life  be  obtained,  especially  where  growing  families  have 
been  dependent.  The  result  has  been,  that  by  working 
six  days  in  a  week,  and  three  hundred  and  thirteen  days 
in  a  year,  honest,  hard-working  men  have  just  been  able 
to  take  care  of  themselves  and  their  families.  Now,  the 
inevitable  consequences  of  the  sabbath-breaking  so  reck- 
lessly engaged  in  by  these  corporations  will  be,  first,  the 
destruction  of  the  morals  of  the  workmen  ;  and,  secondly, 
the  establishment  of  such  conditions  of  labor  that  it  will 
take  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days'  toil  to  secure  the 
same  comforts  of  life  as  are  now  procured  by  the  labor  of 
three  hundred  and  thirteen  days.  Hence  the  sabbath- 
breaking  corporatio7is  are  the  worst  enemies  of  the  work- 
ing-man; and  this,  equally  in  regard  to  his  social,  moral, 
and  religious  interests.  And  it  should  be  added,  with 
special  emphasis,  that  any  system  or  institution  which 
debases  thus  the  working-men  affects  in  like  manner  their 
families.  Nor  can  it  be  doubted  that  the  security  of  our 
national  future  and  the  continuance  of  our  present  form  of 
government,  to  say  nothing  of  the  success  of  the  Christian 
Church,  depend  very  largely  upon  the  social,  moral,  and 
religious  status  of  our  working-men.  Hence,  in  just  so  far 
as  the  corporations  degrade  the  character  of  working-men 
by  their  conscienceless  sabbath  desecration,  they  are  the 
enemies  of  the  Republic. 

n.  Again,  the  great  transportation  corporations  under 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.      33/ 

consideration  constitute  one  of  the  greatest  educational 
forces  of  modern  society ;  and  it  must  be  acknowledged, 
that,  so  far  as  they  are  related  to  the  observance  of  the 
sabbath,  their  educational  influence  is  all  in  the  wrong 
direction. 

In  the  olden  time,  when  good  people,  and  the  community 
almost  without  exception,  laid  aside  their  usual  employ- 
ments at  the  close  of  the  week,  and  carefully  abstained 
from  all  labor  on  the  sabbath  ;  when  a  quiet  hush  settled 
down  on  home  and  street,  on  shop  and  farm,  every  child 
conscious  at  all  of  what  was  taking  place  around  him 
could  but  feel  that  he  was  brought  into  the  presence  of 
the  divine  command  which  produced  these  results,  and 
almost  into  the  presence  of  the  divine  Being  who  had 
given  the  command.  This  influence  was  felt  not  only  by 
the  children,  but  also  by  the  youth,  and,  in  fact,  by  all 
classes  of  people.  From  the  very  necessities  of  the  case 
the  minds  of  the  people  were  called  away  from  worldly  and 
secular  concerns,  and  all  were  compelled  to  feel  that  there 
were  moral  and  religious  obligations  resting  upon  them 
which  had  been  imposed  by  the  Ruler  of  the  universe. 
The  quiet  of  the  sabbath,  and  the  cessation  of  all  servile 
and  unnecessary  labor  on  that  day,  were  moral  forces  for 
the  conservation  of  the  best  interests  of  society  which 
were  of  immeasurable  consequence. 

How  different  the  conditions  under  which  the  people 
of  this  country  are  placed  to-day !  In  a  thousand  towns 
and  cities  may  be  heard  the  scream  of  the  locomotive,  and 
the  rush  of  the  railroad-train.  Steamboat-excursions,  and 
other  means  of  Sunday  pleasure-travel,  are  abundantly 
supplied.  The  ordinary  time-tables,  and  flaming  handbills 
conspicuously  displayed,  announce  the  business  of  the 
sabbath  with  the  same  particularity  as  that  of  ordinary 
week-days.  The  newspapers  advertise  Sunday  excursions 
with  as  much  regularity  as  they  do  the  services  of  the 


338  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

sanctuary;  and  they  give,  in  many  instances,  fuller  notices 
of  Sunday  excursions  and  frolics  than  they  do  of  the 
sermons. 

The  boy  living  on  the  hillside  farm  in  the  most  rural 
town  through  which  the  railroad  runs,  looking  upon  the 
sabbath-trains  that  pass,  whether  freight  or  passenger, 
will,  unless  there  be  some  mighty  counteracting  moral 
force,  gradually  and  imperceptibly  fall  into  the  way  of 
thinking  that  the  sabbath  has  no  special  sacredness ;  and 
the  end,  in  many  cases,  will  be,  that  he  becomes  thor- 
oughly indifferent  to  the  claims  of  God  which  demand 
that  he  should  keep  holy  the  sabbath  day.  Let  this  same' 
youth,  thus  perverted  from  the  right  and  good  way,  be- 
come the  father  of  a  family,  and,  if  his  wife  be  like  himself, 
his  children  will  in  all  probability  grow  up  in  practical 
heathenism. 

Now,  the  same  influences  are  operating  upon  unnum- 
bered thousands  not  only  in  our  large  cities  and  centres 
of  population,  but  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  all  over  the 
country. 

The  Pilgrim  Fathers  left  Holland,  the  land  that  had  pro- 
tected them  and  given  them  a  home  and  shelter,  and  dared 
the  perils  of  the  sea  and  the  wilderness,  because  they 
would  not  bring  up  their  children  in  the  godless  society 
which  surrounded  them;  but  our  children  and  youth  are, 
in  some  respects,  surrounded  by  as  deplorable  influences 
as  those  of  Holland.  If  things  go  on  as  they  have  done 
for  the  last  twenty-five  years,  there  seems  to  be  great 
danger  that  we  shall  become  a  nation  of  sabbath-breakers, 
and,  as  always  happens  in  such  cases,  an  immoral  and  irre- 
ligious nation,  and,  consequently,  a  nation  upon  which  will 
rest  the  frown  and  curse  of  Almighty  God. 

HI.  The  third  evil  consequence  which  follows  in  the 
train  of  corporation  sabbath-breaking  is  the  terrible  waste 
■which  is  necessarily  involved. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.      339 

If  any  thing  has  been  established,  it  has  been  that  men 
and  animals  can  do  more  work  in  a  year,  working  six  days 
in  a  week,  than  they  can  in  working  seven  ;  and  there  is 
almost  equally  good  evidence  to  believe  that  material  such 
as  wood,  and  especially  iron  and  steel,  will  last  longer 
when  used  only  six  days  out  of  seven,  than  when  used 
continuously  all  the  days  in  every  week,  month  in  and 
month  out. 

If  this  be  so,  and  if  economy  of  force  in  the  produc- 
tion and  transportation  of  the  means  of  living,  and  the 
necessaries  of  civilization,  be  an  object,  then  surely  these 
Heaven-defying  corporations  would  do  well  to  conform  to 
the  manifest  laws  of  nature,  which  are  in  absolute  harmony 
with  the  revealed  laws  of  God,  and  allow  both  men  and 
material  one  day's  rest  in  every  seven. 

Concerning  the  magnitude  and  destructiveness  of  the 
evils  of  corporation  sabbath-breaking,  there  can  be  no  room 
for  doubt.  But,  then,  the  question  of  pressing,  practical 
importance  in  this  connection  is  this  :  What  are  the  duties 
of  Christian  men  in  regard  to  these  corporations  .<* 

First  of  all,  it  is  incumbent  that  ministers  of  the  gospel, 
and  all  good  men,  and  especially  the  religious  press,  should 
denounce  the  sabbath-breaking  of  these  guilty  corpora- 
tions. There  must  be  a  purpose  and  an  emphasis  in  this 
denunciation,  which  will  assure  the  transgressors  that  the 
moral  and  religious  sense  of  the  people  so  long  and  griev- 
ously outraged  has  at  last  found  a  voice  and  tongue. 

As  Whittier  says,  — 

"  We  need  preachers  like  Woolman,  or  like  those  who  bore 
The  faith  of  Wesley  to  this  Western  shore ; 
And  deemed  no  convert  genuine  till  he  broke 
Alike  his  servant's  and  the  Devil's  yoke." 

Somebody  must  cry  out  against  this  enormous  sin  which 
leads  as  directly  to  bald,  blank  atheism,  as  any  sin  ever 


340  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

committed  against  God  or  man.  When  we  comprehend 
the  evils  which  threaten,  and  are  even  now  falUng  upon 
us  with  crushing  power,  we  shall  be  dumb  no  longer. 
Above  all,  we  shall  not  lend  our  countenance  to  the  sin 
by  further  silence,  nor  by  the  acceptance  of  the  utterly 
weak  and  worthless  excuses  and  apologies  which  are  made 
for  the  open  and  flagrant  violation  of  the  laws  of  the  State 
and  of  the  Almighty  Ruler  of  the  Universe. 

But  it  is  not  enough  that  words  of  earnest  condemna- 
tion should  be  spoken :  the  practice  must  conform  to  the 
precept. 

*'  Say  well  and  do  well,  both  end  with  a  letter : 
Say  well  is  good,  but  do  well  is  better." 

The  vast  bulk  of  Sunday  travel,  Sunday  visits,  Sunday 
excursions,  has  no  possible  justification  or  excuse.  If  re- 
gard were  had  to  the  law  of  God,  if  the  moral  sense  were 
what  it  ought  to  be,  if  the  conscience  were  rightly  in- 
structed, and  faithfully  performed  its  office,  and  if  heed 
were  given  to  its  admonitions,  ninety-nine  and  nine-tenths 
per  cent  of  all  Sunday  patronage  could  be  withdrawn  from 
these  terrible  sabbath-breaking  corporations. 

Christian  people  must  have  a  conscience  in  regard  to 
this  matter,  or  the  sabbath  which  has  been  a  mighty  tower 
of  defence  against  the  hosts  of  sin  will  be  swept  away,  and 
the  resistless  enemy  will  come  in  like  a  flood,  and  over- 
whelm us  in  one  common  desolation. 

The  evil  example  of  an  hour  may  neutralize  the  preach- 
ing of  a  life-time.  Christians  must  stand  clear  in  this 
matter,  or  their  testimony  against  the  sin  will  be  of  no 
avail. 

One  other  point  of  practical  importance  demands  our 
earnest  consideration.  Somebody  owns  the  stock  of  these 
godless  and  soulless  corporations.  A  very  large  percent- 
age of  it  is  undoubtedly  owned  by  Christian   men  and 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     34I 

women.  In  some  cases  the  ownership  has  come  by  inher- 
itance ;  in  others  money  has  been  invested  in  the  stock,  in 
hope  of  profitable  returns.  It  is  altogether  probable  that 
some  of  these  stocks  are  owned  by  Christian  ministers.  If 
the  stocks  pay  a  dividend,  these  men  and  women  and  min- 
isters find  their  way  to  the  offices  of  the  corporations,  and 
receive  their  share  of  the  profits,  and  quietly  go  their  sev- 
eral ways.  No  matter  if  the  bodies  and  souls  of  men  have 
been  destroyed,  the  morals  of  the  community  debased, 
many  congregations  of  Christian  worshippers  disturbed, 
the  best  security  of  our  national  perpetuity  removed,  and 
the  wrath  of  a  justly-offended  God  moved  towards  the 
people  ;  still  these  professing  saints  accept  the  profits,  and, 
if  they  are  large,  rejoice  and  buy  more  stock,  and  so  sink 
deeper  and  deeper  in  this  complicity  with  the  terrible  sin. 

It  is  doubtful  if  there  can  be  found  on  record  a  single 
instance,  though  there  may  be  some,  in  which  a  Christian 
man  has  refused  these  profits,  or  sold  his  stock  to  clear 
himself,  or  has  even  uttered  a  manly  protest  against  the 
continued  and  excuseless  violation  of  the  sabbath  by  the 
corporation  of  which  he  is  a  stockholder.  It  is  a  question 
whether  there  is  conscience,  or  virtue,  or  religion,  or  sim- 
ple, honest  God-fearing,  enough  among  the  Christian  stock- 
holders of  these  corporations,  to  lead  one  of  them  to  speak 
a  word  or  cast  a  vote  in  opposition  to  the  iniquity  so 
recklessly  practised. 

When  Christians  themselves  observe  with  more  strict- 
ness the  commands  of  God  in  regard  to  the  sabbath,  may 
we  hope  for  some  change  for  the  better  in  the  now  deplora- 
ble condition  of  affairs.  No  ray  of  light  dawns  upon  us 
from  any  other  source.  Oh  that  God  would  send  us  help 
out  of  the  sanctuary!  and  that  from  this  hour  may  be 
dated  the  beginning  of  a  glorious  reformation  in  the  in- 
terest of  a  devout,  consistent,  and  sanctified  observance  of 
the  sabbath. 


342  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 


THE   SABBATH   AND   RAILROADS    AND   STEAMBOATS. 

BY  HON.  WILLIAM  E.  DODGE  OF  NEW  YORK. 

We  are  called  to  confront  a  most  gigantic  obstacle  to 
the  maintenance  of  the  sabbath  of  our  fathers,  —  one  of 
which  they  never  had  any  knowledge.  But  who  can  for 
a  moment  doubt  what  would  have  been  their  action,  had 
they  been  called  on  to  confer  on  any  set  of  men  the -char- 
tered right  to  construct  and  operate  railroads  1  We  may 
be  sure  they  would  have  made  it  a  condition,  that  they 
should  not  be  run  on  the  sabbath. 

It  is  within  the  lifetime  of  some  present,  that  the  first 
lines  of  steamboats  and  railroads  were  established ;  and 
they  have  grown  so  rapidly  that  they  now  extend  from  the 
Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  and  from  the  coasts  to  the  far 
West  in  every  direction  ;  and  steamers  have  taken  the 
place  of  our  sailing-vessels,  and  are  running  on  all  the 
navigable  rivers  and  along  our  shores,  and  have  brought 
all  Europe  within  a  few-days'  journey. 

As  our  railroads  are  the  more  important,  I  shall  give 
special  attention  to  them  ;  for,  while  steamboats  are  prin- 
cipally owned  and  managed  by  individuals,  our  railroads 
exist  by  virtue  of  chartered  rights,  and  are  controlled  by 
stockholders. 

Railroads  have  wrought  wonders  in  the  rapid  develop- 
ment and  general  prosperity  of  our  country  during  the  last 
half-century.  They  have  become  the  great  highway  for 
the  millions ;  have  vastly  increased  travel ;  brought  the 
distant  parts  of  the  country  together  ;  given  to  traffic  and 
commerce  a  new  impulse  ;  equalized  values  of  the  soil  and 
manufactory ;  made  a  journey  of  thousands  of  miles  but  as 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     343 

a  pleasure-trip ;  and,  with  the  aid  of  the  telegraph,  have 
enabled  merchants  while  residing  thousands  of  miles  away 
to  sell  and  buy  in  our  principal  coast  cities,  and  even  fix  a 
date  of  delivery.  They  are  building  up  vast  centres  of 
traffic  along  these  lines  ;  have  added  untold  millions  of 
wealth  to  the  country,  and  are  increasing  at  a  most  rapid 
rate ;  and,  in  a  few  years,  will  have  united  our  entire  coun- 
try with  iron  bands.  They  have  become  every  day  more 
and  more  an  absolute  necessity. 

With  tJioiisands  of  millions  invested,  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  our  citizens  employed  in  connection  with  their 
direct  management,  and  furnishing  the  necessary  machine- 
ry and  material,  and  with  the  vast  number  of  stockholders 
and  the  entire  travelhng  community,  their  moral  influence 
is  beyond  calculation. 

But  if  railroads,  with  all  these  wonderful  advantages, 
cannot  be  conducted  without  changing  the  habits  and  cus- 
toms of  our  people,  and  trampling  on  the  right  of  the 
community  to  a  quiet  day  for  rest  and  worship,  and  train- 
ing up  the  thousands  in  their  employ  to  desecrate  the 
sabbath,  and  rushing  by  our  cities  and  towns  and  quiet 
villages,  screaming  as  they  go.  No  sabbath  I  No  sabbath  !  — 
then  they  will  become  a  real  curse  rather  than  a  blessing. 
Consider  the  vast  sums  invested  ;  the  great  competition 
of  the  principal  trunk-lines  ;  the  constantly  increasing  de- 
mands for  rapid  passenger-trains,  and  the  press  of  freight 
to  the  seaboard,  becoming  every  year  larger,  particularly 
that  bound  for  Europe,  much  of  it  sold  for  shipment  by 
special  steamers,  and  intended  so  to  arrive  as  to  be  in  time 
for  trans-shipment  at  once,  or  with  the  least  possible  delay 
or  expense  ;  parties  perhaps  in  Chicago,  Milwaukee,  St. 
Louis,  or  Cincinnati,  —  these  having  been  made  ports  of 
entry  and  shipping  direct  to  all  parts  of  the  world,  — 
telegraphing  the  superintendent  of  the  road,  "■  We  have 
shipped  to-day  twenty  five  cars  of  wheat,  or  perhaps  ten 


344  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

cars  of  live-stock,  which  are  to  be  delivered  to  such  a 
steamer  on  such  a  day  ;  and  we  shall  depend  on  your 
giving  us  rapid  transit  and  prompt  delivery."  Now,  this 
superintendent  feels  his  responsibility,  and  by  this  con- 
tinual press  and  excitement,  which  the  system  of  railroads 
and  telegraphs  almost  of  necessity  creates,  has  come  to 
lose  all  thoughts  of  the  sabbath,  or  perhaps  has  tried  to 
convince  his  conscience  that  these  long  lines  of  inland 
transportation  are  like  ocean  travel,  — not  expected  to  stop 
on  the  sabbath. 

These  difficulties  are  constantly  increasing ;  so  that 
whereas,  a  few  years  ago,  the  running  of  freight-trains  on 
the  sabbath  was  the  exception,  now,  on  many  of  our  trunk- 
lines  leading  from  the  West,  there  are  more  on  the  sab- 
bath than  on  other  days,  as  the  passenger-trains  are  gen- 
erally less,  and  they  use  the  sabbath  to  make  up  lost  time, 
and  hurry  on  the  freight  to  the  seaboard.  The  constant 
extension  of  lines  West  and  North,  tributary  to  these 
trunk-lines,  only  increases  the  evil  ;  and,  unless  some 
prompt  measure  can  be  adopted  soon,  the  matter  of  sab-' 
bath  desecration  by  our  railroads  will  be  past  prevention. 

In  regard  to  passenger-traffic,  there  is  very  great  diffi- 
culty in  drawing  the  line  between  entire  rest  and  the  run- 
ning of  such  trains  as  the  general  public  would  demand  for 
long  or  through  travel,  trains  for  the  carrying  of  the  mail, 
and,  near  our  cities,  milk-trains.  If  our  railroad-managers 
could  be  made  to  feel  their  obligations  to  God,  to  the 
morals  of  the  country,  and  their  duty  to  their  employes, 
so  as  on  these  long  lines  of  travel  to  run  only  a  single 
mail-train  each  way  on  the  sabbath,  it  would  of  itself  go 
far  to  honor  God's  day  of  rest. 

The  fact  is,  the  railroad  interest  has  become  the  all- 
powerful,  overshadowing  interest  of  the  country,  and  every 
year  is  adding  to  its  influence.  Railroads  will  double  in 
the  next  twenty  years ;  and  what  is  done  must  be  done 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.    345 

promptly,  or  their  power  will  be  beyond  control.  The 
question  of  the  day,  for  every  man  who  loves  his  country 
and  believes  in  the  importance  and  value  of  the  Christian 
sabbath,  as  we  in  America  have  cherished  and  honored  it, 
—  I  say,  the  great  question  is,  Shall  this  vast  railroad 
interest  be  so  conducted  as  to  prove  a  blessing  to  the  land  ? 
or  shall  it  defy  and  ti'ample  on  all  we  hold  dear,  and  become 
one  of  the  principal  instruments  in  changing  otcr  Ameri- 
can' sabbath  into  the  Continental  holiday,  or,  as  it  is  fast 
growing,  a  day  like  all  the  others  of  the  week  ? 

I  have  no  doubt  that  it  is  in  the  power  of  the  intelligent 
lovers  of  the  sabbath,  in  connection  with  the  stockholders 
in  these  roads,  to  bring  about  a  change  which  shall  stop 
the  transit  of  freight-trains,  and  reduce  the  passenger- 
traffic  to  such  an  extent  that  the  influence  shall  tell  on  the 
side  of  sabbath  observance.  The  fact  of  such  difference 
between  that  and  the  other  days  will  show  clearly  that 
there  is  one  day  of  rest. 

The  great  question  before  us  is  the  popular  one,  *'  What 
are  you  going  to  do  about  it  t "  Let  this  come  home  to 
every  Christian  and  true  lover  of  his  country,  —  Have  I 
any  thing  to  do  about  it,  or  any  responsibility  in  connec- 
tion with  it  .''  The  amount  of  money  invested  by  New- 
England  men  in  railroads  at  home  and  in  the  West  may 
be  estimated  by  hundreds  of  millions  ;  a  sum  so  vast  that, 
if  it  could  be  once  known,  w^ould  show  the  influence  that 
New  England  has  in  this  matter.  I  have  not  a  doubt  that 
if  the  Christian  men  of  this  country,  when  about  to  invest 
in  the  stock  or  securities  of  our  railroads,  would  ask,  "Does 
that  road  run  on  Sunday.''"  and,  if  so,  refuse  to  put  money 
into  such  roads,  it  would  go  far  to  settle  this  question. 
Those  who  build  railroads  are  shrewd  mejt ;  and  their  in- 
terest would  induce  them  so  to  conduct  them  that  the 
good  men  of  our  country  would  wish  to  hold  their  securi- 
ties. 


34^  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

Stockholders  appear  to  act  as  if  they  had  no  responsi- 
bihty  in  the  matter.  Their  only  question  is,  "  Is  the  stock 
good?"  "Does  it  pay  regular  dividends?"  If  so,  no 
matter  how  they  get  the  money  ;  that  is  their  lookout.  I 
can  go  to  church  ;  and  if  the  train  does  run  past,  drown- 
ing the  voice  of  the  preacher,  I  am  fully  compensated  by 
the  reflection  that  they  are  thus  making  sure  my  divi- 
dends. Don't  be  too  sure.  The  poor,  overworked  engi- 
neers, conductors,  and  brakemen  may  soon  lose  their 
interest,  become  discouraged,  careless,  or  incapable  of  that 
prompt  action  necessary  at  the  moment  of  danger  ;  and  an 
accident  may  occur  which  will  send  many  into  eternity, 
and  the  loss  to  your  company  be  so  great  as  to  prevent 
your  dividend. 

I  remember  a  case  in  point.  I  had,  as  a  teacher  in  my 
Sunday  school,  a  man  who  for  many  years  ran  the  morn- 
ing express  on  the  New- York  and  New-Haven  road.  One 
winter  morning,  as  he  came  into  school,  he  said  to  me, 
"  Mr.  Dodge,  I  suppose  I  have  lost  my  position  on  the 
road."  I  said,  **  What  has  happened  ?  "  for  I  knew  he  was 
in  all  respects  a  first-class  man,  receiving  the  very  high- 
est wages,  and  had  never  met  with  any  serious  accident. 
Said  he,  "The  superintendent  sent  for  me  early  this  morn- 
ing, to  get  out  my  engine  to  open  the  road,  as  there  had 
fallen  a  deep  snow  during  the  night.  I  sent  word  that  on 
any  other  day  I  was  ready  to  do  any  extra  work ;  but  I 
could  not  come  on  the  sabbath.  Before  I  had  finished  my 
breakfast,  peremptory  orders  came  for  me  to  come  at  once, 
and  get  out  my  engine.  I  replied  that  I  was  just  going 
to  my  sabbath  school,  and  could  not  come ;  and  I  presume 
I  shall  get  my  discharge  to-morrow."  I  said,  "  Go  early  in 
the  morning  to  the  superintendent,  and  say  that,  although 
you  are  only  engaged  to  run  the  express-train,  yet  at  any 
time,  day  or  night,  if  any  thing  special  should  happen,  you 
would  be  ready  to  do  what  you  could  for  the  company ; 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     347 

but  cannot  work  on  Sunday.  And,  if  you  are  dismissed,  I 
will  secure  you  a  first-rate  position  on  a  road  in  which 
I  am  interested,  that  never  runs  on  Sunday."  The  next 
sabbath  he  told  me  that  he  began  to  speak  to  the  superin- 
tendent, but  he  stopped  him,  and  said,  "  I  respect  your 
position  ;  and  you  shall  never  be  called  on  for  Sunday 
work  again." 

A  few  months  after,  there  occurred  to  that  express- 
train  the  awful  accident  at  Norwalk  Bridge,  which  cost  so 
many  valuable  lives,  and  over  two  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand dollars  to  the  company.  I  at  once  supposed  my  good 
teacher  had  ''gone  to  his  home,"  and  made  my  way  to  the 
office  of  the  company,  to  find  instead  that  he  had  been 
permitted  to  leave  for  a  few  days  on  important  business, 
and  the  train  had  been  put  in  charge  of  a  former  engineer 
of  the  road,  who  had  just  returned  from  California. 

**  Oh  !  "  said  the  superintendent,  "  no  such  accident 
could  have  happened  if  Smith  had  been  on  the  engine." 

By  the  determination  of  the  managers  to  use  the  sabbath 
as  any  other  day,  they  must  either  drive  all  good,  sabbath- 
loving  men  from  their  roads,  or  so  demoralize  them  that 
they  may  soon  come  to  feel,  that,  if  there  is  no  binding 
force  in  the  Fourth  Commandment,  there  is  none  in  the 
Eighth.  Stockholders  will  find  that  they  have  a  deep 
pecuniary  interest  in  so  conducting  their  roads  that  honest, 
faithful  Christian  men  can  be  employed,  and  that  they 
have  a  right  to  claim,  in  return  for  their  faithful  work,  the 
one  day's  rest  which  God  and  nature  demand. 

Look  at  that  poor,  jaded  engineer,  who  has  run  his 
engine  over  his  prescribed  route  for  seven  days,  with  no 
opportunity  for  rest,  or  for  visiting  his  family,  or  for  chan- 
ging his  soiled  clothes.  He  comes  to  his  engine  on  Mon- 
day with  no  heart  in  his  work  ;  feels  discouraged,  degraded, 
and  like  a  slave,  who  is  working  for  those  who  have  no 
sympathy   with   him ;    and   he   works   because   he  must. 


34^  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

Some  of  you  may  never  have  stood  on  the  railroad-engine, 
may  never  have  watched  the  eye  and  the  mind  of  the  man 
who  holds  the  brake,  running  thirty  miles  an  hour,  danger 
all  around,  knowing  that  he  has  a  train  of  immortal  beings. 
That  man  has  his  mind,  his  thought,  exercised  intently 
six  days  in  a  week.  He  is  entitled  to  rest.  Take  the  man 
whose  family,  whose  children,  hardly  know  him ;  who  goes 
week  after  week  toiling  and  toiling,  covered  with  dirt  and 
smoke,  and  has  no  time  to  dress,  and  meet  his  little  family. 
You  go  on  a  Monday  morning  to  see  a  poor,  haggard-look- 
ing engineer,  all  dirty,  kept  up  all  day  Sunday,  and  all 
night,  and  all  worn  out  perhaps.  He  steps  upon  the 
engine.  If  you  are  a  railroad  man,  you  feel  intense 
anxiety  all  the  time.  Now  contrast  this  man  with  the  one 
who  runs  his  engine  on  a  sabbath-keeping  road,  and  who, 
as  he  works  during  the  week,  is  looking  forward  to  a  quiet 
day  of  rest  with  his  family.  He  goes  to  his  work  with  a 
cheerful  and  contented  feeling  ;  takes  pride  in  his  connec- 
tion with  a  company  that  sympathizes  with  its  employes ; 
believes  that  God  understood  the  needs  of  man  when  he 
provided  one  day  in  seven  as  a  day  of  rest ;  takes  pride  in 
having  his  engine  always  clean  and  in  good  order;  and, 
when  Saturday  night  comes,  he  goes  to  his  home  to  meet  a 
happy  wife,  and  the  welcome  of  his  children  ;  and  on  the 
Monday  steps  on  board  his  engine,  refreshed  by  the  rest, 
and,  with  his  clean  clothes,  feels  he  is  a  man,  and  ready 
in  any  crisis  to  act  with  a  cool,  clear  head,  watching  the 
interests  of  the  company  as  if  they  were  his  own,  and  able 
to  do,  and  do  well,  in  six  days,  what  the  other  man  is  com- 
pelled to  do  in  seven.  He  is  worth  vastly  more  to  the 
company  than  if  made  to  work  seven  days.  What  our  rail- 
roads need  is  to  secure  respectable,  honest  men,  who  will 
have  an  interest  in  the  success  of  the  company.  This 
they  cannot  have  if  they  demand  seven  days  work. 

If   Christian    stockholders  would   unite   in  an    earnest, 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     349 

determined  demand  that  their  agents  would  confine  their 
sabbath  work  to  the  least  possible  mail-trains,  and  that  no 
freight-trains  or  work  in  shops  or  on  the  road  should  be 
done  on  the  sabbath,  the  thing  could  to  a  large  extent  be 
done ;  yet  I  do  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  the  most 
powerful  of  the  trunk-lines  are  controlled  by  a  few  men 
whose  ambition  is  unbounded,  and  who  appear  to  look 
only  at  their  own,  without  regard  to  the  claims  of  others, 
or  to  the  influence  they  exert  on  the  morals  of  the  coun- 
try ;  and,  holding  the  terminus,  they  influence,  almost  of 
necessity,  all  the  lines  connected  with  them  ;  and,  because 
they  disregard  the  claims  of  the  sabbath,  they  are  gradu- 
ally compelling  the  competing  lines,  who  might  desire  to 
lessen  their  Sunday  service,  to  follow  their  example.  And 
as  these  great  corporations  grow  stronger  and  stronger, 
reaching  farther  into  the  interior  every  year,  their  sabbath- 
desecrating  influence  is  continually  widening  and  extend- 
ing. Many  of  our  great  Western  cities  are  struggling  to 
hold  the  American  sabbath  against  the  demands  of  a  large 
foreign  element  in  favor  of  a  Continental  sabbath.  This 
renders  the  sabbath  desecrations  by  the  railroads  doubly 
dangerous. 

The  question  returns,  What  can  be  done  t  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  a  very  large  number  of  roads  are  virtually 
sabbath-keeping.  *'  Where  there  is  a  will  there  is  a  way  ;  " 
and  there  is  abundant  evidence  that  all  the  transportation 
now  passing,  or  that  may  be  hereafter  carried,  can  be  done 
in  six  days,  if  there  were  a  readiness  to  arrange  for  it,  and 
that  the  companies  would  all  be  the  better  and  more  valu- 
able for  it. 

Their  "  Monthly  Journal "  for  July  publishes  the  follow- 
ing petition  of  four  hundred  and  fifty  engineers,  employed 
on  the  New-York  Central  and  Hudson-River  Railways. 
Its  arguments  and  appeals  well  deserve  the  attention 
not    only   of    all   who    are    in   any   way   responsible   for 


350  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

Sunday  railway  traffic,    but   of   the    Christian    people  of 
this  land :  — 


PETITION    TO    ABOLISH     SUNDAY    TRAINS     ON    THE 
N.  Y.  C.  &  H.  R.  R.R. 

To  William  H.  Vanderbilt,  Vice-President : 

Sir,  —  The  undersigned,  locomotive-engineers  in  your  employ, 
respectfully  represent  that  the  custom  of  running  freight-trains  on  the 
sabbath  on  your  line  of  road  has  increased,  from  the  occasional  moving 
of  one  or  two  trains  on  Sundays,  during  some  great  press  of  business, 
until  it  has  in  fact  become  a  regular  practice,  and  a  great  hardship 
upon  your  engineers.  We  have  borne  this  grievance  patiently,  hoping 
every  succeeding  year  that  it  would  decrease.  We  are  willing  to 
submit  to  any  reasonable  privations,  mental  or  physical,  to  assist  the 
officers  of  your  company  to  operate  the  road  to  achieve  a  financial 
triumph  ;  but,  after  a  long  and  weary  service,  we  do  not  see  any  signs 
of  relief,  and  we  are  forced  to  come  to  you  with  our  trouble,  and  most 
respectfully  ask  you  to  relieve  us  from  Sunday  labor,  so  far  as  it  is  in 
your  power  to  do  so. 

Our  objections  to  Sunday  labor  are  :  — 

First,  This  never-ending  toil  ruins  our  health,  and  prematurely 
makes  us  feel  worn  out,  like  old  men ;  and  we  are  sensible  of  our 
inability  to  perform  our  duty  as  well  when  we  work  to  an  excess. 

Second,  That  the  customs  of  all  civilized  countries,  as  well  as  all 
laws  human  and  divine,  recognize  Sunday  as  a  day  for  rest  and  recu- 
peration; and,  notwithstanding  intervals  of  rest  might  be  arranged  for 
us  upon  other  days  than  Sunday,  we  feel  that  by  so  doing  we  would 
be  forced  to  exclude  ourselves  from  all  church,  family,  and  social 
privileges  that  other  citizens  enjoy. 

Third,  Nearly  all  the  undersigned  have  children  that  they  desire 
to  have  educated  in  every  thing  that  will  tend  to  make  them  good 
men  and  women ;  and  we  cannot  help  but  see  that  our  example  in 
ignoring  the  sabbath  day  has  a  very  demoralizing  influence  upon  them. 

Fourth,  Because  we  believe  the  best  interests  of  the  company  we 
serve,  as  well  as  ours,  will  be  promoted  thereby,  and  because  we 
believe  locomotive-engineers  should  occupy  as  high  social  and  reli- 
gious positions  as  men  in  any  other  calling. 

We  know  the  question  will  be  considered,  How  can  this  Sunday 
work  be  avoided,  with  the  immense  and  constantly  increasing  traffic? 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     35  I 

We  have  watched  this  matter  for  the  past  twenty  years  ;  we  have  seen 
it  grow  from  its  infancy  until  it  has  arrived  at  its  now  gigantic  propor- 
tions, from  one  train  on  the  sabbath  until  we  now  have  about  thirty 
each  way;  and  we  do  not  hesitate  in  saying  that  we  can  do  as  much 
work  in  six  days,  with  the  seventh  for  rest,  as  is  now  done. 

It  is  a  fact,  observable  by  all  connected  with  the  immediate  running 
of  freight-trains,  that  on  Monday  freight  is  comparatively  light;  Tues- 
day it  strengthens  a  little,  and  keeps  increasing  until  Saturday;  and 
Sundays  are  the  heaviest  of  the  week. 

The  objection  may  be  offered,  that,  if  your  lines  stop,  the  receiving- 
points  from  other  roads  will  be  blocked  up.  In  reply,  we  would 
most  respectfully  suggest,  that,  when  the  main  lines  do  not  run,  the 
tributaries  would  only  be  too  glad  to  follow  the  good  example. 

The  question  might  also  arise.  If  traffic  is  suspended  twenty-four 
hours,  will  not  the  company  lose  one-seventh  of  its  profits?  In  an- 
swer, we  will  pledge  our  experience,  health,  and  strength,  that,  at  the 
end  of  the  year,  our  employers  will  not  lose  one  cent,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, will  be  the  gainers  financially.  Our  reasons  are  these  :  At 
present  the  duties  of  your  locomotive-engineers  are  incessant,  day 
after  day,  night  succeeding  night,  Sunday  and  all,  rain  or  shine,  with 
all  the  fearful  inclemencies  of  a  rigorous  winter  to  contend  with.  The 
great  strain  of  both  mental  and  physical  faculties  constantly  employed 
has  a  tendency  in  time  to  impair  the  requisites  so  necessary  to  make 
a  good  engineer. 

Troubled  in  mind,  jaded  and  worn  out  in  body,  the  engineer  can- 
not give  his  duties  the  attention  they  should  have  in  order  to  best 
advance  his  employers'  interests.  We  venture  to  say,  not  on  this 
broad  continent,  in  any  branch  of  business  or  traffic,  can  be  found 
any  class  in  the  same  position  as  railroad-men.  They  are  severed 
from  associations  that  all  hold  most  dear,  debarred  from  the  opportu- 
nity of  worship,  —  that  tribute  that  man  owes  to  his  God,  —  witness- 
ing all  those  pleasures  accorded  to  others,  which  are  the  only  oasis 
in  the  deserts  of  this  life,  and  with  no  prospect  of  relief.  We  ask 
you  to  aid  us. 

Give  us  the  sabbath  for  rest  after  our  week  of  laborious  duties ; 
and  we  pledge  you,  that  with  a  system  invigorated  by  a  season  of  re- 
pose, by  a  brain  eased  and  cleared  by  hours  of  relaxation,  we  can  go 
to  work  with  more  energy,  more  mental  and  physical  force,  and  can 
and  will  accomplish  more  work,  and  do  it  better  if  possible,  in  six 
days,  than  we  can  now  do  in  seven.  We  can  give  you  ten  days  in 
six,  if  you  require  it,  if  we  can  only  look  forward  to  a  certain  period 
of  rest. 


352  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

In  conclusion,  we  hope  and  trust,  that,  in  conjunction  with  other 
gentlemen  of  the  trunk-lines  leading  to  the  seaboard,  you  will  be  able 
to  accomplish  something  that  will  ameliorate  our  condition. 

In  closing,  we  desire  to  say  to  the  respected  and  honored  gentle- 
man, the  president  of  this  road,  ripe  in  years,  with  a  career  un- 
paralleled in  the  history  of  any  country  as  a  successful  financial  and 
business  manager,  we  hope  and  trust  that  the  abolition  of  freight- 
traffic  on  the  sabbath,  with  the  innumerable  favors  and  privileges  it 
would  entail  on  his  employes,  would  be  an  event  in  his  life  that  would 
give  the  greatest  pleasure,  and  from  thousands  of  tongues  would 
ascend  an  invocation  to  Divine  Providence  to  spare  for  many  years 
the  author  of  this  inestimable  boon,  —  the  cessation  of  Sunday  labor. 

M.  RICKARD,  Secretary. 

The  petition,  it  is  stated,  was  presented  by  a  large  com- 
mittee, who  received  a  courteous  hearing,  but  no  assurance 
of  present  relief. 

There  are  roads  doing  a  large  through  business  that  run 
no  trains  on  the  sabbath.  The  Delaware,  Lackawanna, 
and  Western  Railroad  Company,  with  its  leased  connec- 
tions, extending  from  Lake  Ontario  to  New  York  City,  — 
three  hundred  miles —  runs  no  passenger  or  freight  trains 
on  the  sabbath,  except  an  early  mail  and  milk  train  on  the 
Morris  and  Essex  Division. 

This  company  was  formed  in  my  office  thirty  years  ago, 
and  has  maintained  its  respect  for  the  sabbath  to  this  day. 
I  make  the  following  extract  from  the  report  of  the  sabbath 
committee  :  — 

"  The  practicability  of  dispensing  with  much  labor  on  Sunday 
commonly  regarded  as  necessary  is  shown  by  such  facts  as  the  follow- 
ing. Within  a  few  years  past,  several  railways  have  changed  the  gauge 
of  their  tracks,  and  in  most  instances  it  has  been  done  on  Sunday 
under  the  plea  of  necessity.  The  Delaware,  Lackawanna,  and  West- 
ern road,  which  runs  no  trains  on  Sunday,  had  occasion  to  change  its 
gauge  for  three  hundred  miles.  It  having  been  reported  that  this  had 
been  done  on  Sunday,  the  president  of  the  road  addressed  the  follow- 
ing note  to  the  paper  making  the  statement :  — 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     353 

Delaware,  Lackawanna,  and  Western  Railroad  Company, 
New  York,  May  31,  1876. 
The  gauge  of  this  company's  railroad  was  altered  on  Saturday,  not  Sunday 
last,  as  stated  in  error  in  your  journal  of  Monday  morning.  Please  make  the  correc- 
tion, as  we  believe  in  the  observance  (by  rest  from  labor,  at  least)  of  the  Christian  as 
well  as  the  *  American  sabbath,'  and  that  railroad  management  should  be  exemplary 
in  the  proper  obligations  to  the  community.        Yours  truly, 

SAMUEL   SLOAN,  President. 

"  The  report  of  Mr.  Halstead,  the  superintendent,  shows  in  detail 
how  the  change  was  made  without  Sunday  work  of  any  kind,  without 
an  accident  to  person  or  property,  and  with  but  trifling  interruption  of 
the  regular  traffic. 

"A  change  of  gauge  was  also  made  last  year  on  the  Houston  and 
Texas  Central  Railway,  for  three  hundred  and  sixty  miles,  under  the 
presidency  of  Mr.  William  E.  Dodge,  and  with  Mr.  J.  Durand  as 
superintendent,  without  any  Sunday  work,  and  with  as  little  interrup- 
tion of  traffic  as  in  other  instances  where  the  work  was  done  on  Sun- 
day." 

Our  great  cities  are  suffering  from  the  demands  of  the 
foreign  population  that  the  sabbath  shall  be  a  day  of  rec- 
reation for  themselves  and  families  ;  and  in  some  of  our 
cities  the  Continental  sabbath  begins  to  appear.  The 
railroads  and  steamboats  are  ready  to  meet  this  desire  ; 
and  now  thousands  crowd  every  conveyance  that  will 
carry  them  out  into  the  country  for  a  holiday ;  and  our 
new  lines  of  elevated  roads  in  New  York,  while  a  great 
convenience  on  week-days,  are  becoming  a  great  nuisance 
on  the  sabbath,  and  are  run  for  no  other  reason  than  to 
make  money. 

Trains  are  rushing  up  and  down  our  avenues  as  if  deter- 
mined to  wipe  out  every  vestige  of  the  Christian  sabbath  ; 
and  yet  the  men  who  started  and  now  control  these  ele- 
vated roads  are  men  who  profess  to  value  the  sabbath  and 
the  house  of  God.  Very  recently  they  have  put  up  large 
placards,  advertising  with  great  prominence  that  trains  will 
run  on  the  sabbath  regularly,  from  half-past  seven  in  the 
morning  until  half-past  seven  in  the  evening,  from  the 
Battery  to  Harlem. 


354  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

A  few  years  since,  the  sabbath  committee  addressed  a 
communication  to  a  large  number  of  railroads,  asking  to 
know  if  they  ran  trains  on  Sunday,  and,  if  so,  how  many, 
and  their  experience  as  to  its  being,  on  the  whole,  profitable 
or  otherwise,  and  their  views  as  to  the  necessity  of  running 
trains,  and  particularly  common  and  freight  trains. 

They  received  replies  from  a  very  large  number,  sixty- 
five  reporting  that  they  did  no  work  on  Sunday ;  others, 
that  they  only  ran  mail  or  milk  trains ;  others,  that  they 
did  as  little  as  possible  ;  and  many  expressing  anxiety  to 
stop  all  work  on  the  sabbath  for  the  sake  of  their  men. 
The  general  excuse  of  many  was  that  tJie  running  of  the 
trunk-lines  and  competi7ig  jvads  made  it  necessary,  tJiough 
they  would  prefer  to  rest  on  the  sabbath.  The  impression, 
on  the  whole  was  favorable,  and  encouraged  efforts  to 
secure  a  general  suspension  of  all  freight-trains,  and 
reduction  of  passenger-trains. 

The  rapid  growth  of  the  railroads,  and  their  danger  if 
not  checked,  should  arouse  to  effort  every  lover  of  the 
sabbath.  What  we  do,  we  must  do  at  once.  In  all  our 
principal  cities,  influences  are  at  work  to  undermine  and 
secularize  our  American  sabbath.  Let  there  be  one  ear- 
nest, united  effort  of  God's  people ;  let  the  clergy  ring  out 
the  danger  from  the  pulpits ;  the  religious,  and,  as  far  as 
possible,  the  secular  press,  enlighten  the  people  as  to  the 
necessity  and  value  of  a  day  of  rest  for  the  working-man. 
Above  all,  let  there  be  constant,  earnest  prayer  for  a  gen- 
eral revival  of  religion  all  over  the  land,  that  the  Lord  of 
the  sabbath  would  open  the  eyes  of  the  nation  to  a  true 
sense  of  its  necessity. 

And  now  I  want  to  say  [throwing  aside  his  manuscript] 
that  I  came  up  here  with  the  idea  that,  as  Christians,  we 
were  awake  to  the  fact  that  we  were  just  on  the  eve  of 
losing  our  sabbath.  I  know  that  you,  perhaps,  in  New 
England,  in  your  quiet  villages,  do  not  understand  it  as 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     355 

we  do  in  the  cities,  —  as  our  Western  cities  do,  with 
these  railroads  rushing  through  the  towns  and  villages 
everywhere,  and  with  their  shops  at  work  on  Sunday,  and 
with  every  thing  indicating  that  this  gigantic  power  of 
railroads  is  to  be  increased.  For  it  is  but  in  its  infancy 
to-day;  and  when  it  shall  be  fifty  years  older  than  it  is 
now,  unless  something  is  done  to  check  this  evil  to-day  by 
the  Christian  people  of  this  country,  it  will  be  altogether 
too  late.  There  will  be  three  times  the  number  of  miles 
of  railroad  in  twenty  years  from  now  that  there  are  to-day, 
and  there  is  a  monstrous  responsibility  connected  with  it. 
It  is  not  only  the  railroad  interest,  but  there  is  a  constant 
letting-down  of  the  sabbath  day  even  by  Christians 
throughout  the  country.  We  must  look  the  difficulties 
right  in  the  face,  just  as  they  are,  and  ask  what  we  can 
do,  and  ought  to  do,  as  Christians.  What  we  want  to 
do,  friends,  is  to  fasten  on  the  sabbath,  if  we  love  it,  if 
we  cherish  it,  if  we  want  our  children  and  children's  chil- 
dren to  enjoy  what  we  have  enjoyed.  God  has  spared  my 
life  for  more  than  threescore  years  and  ten  ;  and  I  look 
back  to  the  quiet  village  in  Connecticut  where  I  was 
brought  up,  and  I  cherish  the  New-England  sabbath,  and 
I  hope  my  children  and  children's  children  will  know 
something  of  its  value. 

But,  if  we  would  do  any  thing,  let  us  be  about  it  ;  and, 
above  all  things,  let  Christian  men  who  are  interested  in 
these  railroads  ask  themselves  the  question  whether  they 
can  properly  be  partners  in  concerns  that  are  deliberately 
breaking  down  the  sabbath.  What  an  effect  would  be 
produced  among  our  Western  railroad-men  if  it  were 
known  that  the  New-England  Christian  men  and  the 
New-England  men  who  were  not  professed  Christians, 
but  who  loved  New-England's  quiet  that  had  grown  out 
of  the  sabbath,  would  ask  as  the  first  question,  when 
they  were  called  upon  to  invest  in  a  Western  railroad,  "  Is 


356  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

your  road  going  to  run  on  Sunday  ? "  and,  if  the  answer 
was  in  the  affirmative,  then  they  would  say,  **  I  don't  want 
the  stock  "  !  Would  that  Christian  men  in  New  England 
would  ask  themselves  the  question  on  their  knees,  before 
God,  whether  they  could  conscientiously  hold  stock  in 
railroads  that  were  paying  them  dividends  earned  by 
breaking  down  the  sabbath  !  I  think  that  many  of  them, 
as  they  offered  a  prayer  to  God  for  the  sabbath,  would 
find  their  mouths  stopped  before  God  when  they  remem- 
bered that  they  were  partners  in  these  gigantic  companies 
that  were  rushing  through  the  land,  and  destroying  every 
vestige  of  the  sabbath. 

And  now,  one  thing  more.  God  lives,  God  lives,  and 
God  hears  prayer.  If  you  look  back  over  the  long  history 
of  the  New-England  Church,  you  will  find  that  God  has 
been  the  hearer  and  the  answerer  of  prayer.  But  what 
we  want  now  is  one  of  those  old-fashioned  New-England 
revivals  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  not  only  of 
New  England,  but  of  the  land ;  and  if  Christian  men  and 
women  will  only  act  like  Christian  men  and  women,  and 
hold  no  communion  with  the  works  of  darkness,  and  refuse 
to  be  associated  with  an  institution  that  will  dishonor  the 
sabbath,  we  will  see  a  great  change  for  the  better. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     357 


THE   LORD'S   DAY  AND   THE   MERCHANT. 

BY   RUSSELL   STURGIS,    JR.,    ESQ.,    OF   BOSTON. 

When  called  to  take  the  place  of  another  in  the  presen- 
tation of  the  subject,  ''The  Merchant  and  the  Sabbath," 
it  was  not  because  I  felt  peculiarly  fitted  in  any  respect 
for  the  work,  but,  being  urged  to  it  by  the  committee,  I 
gladly  consented  because  of  my  deep  interest  in  whatever 
tends  to  increase  among  all  men  the  appreciation  of  a  day 
which  the  Creator  himself  set  apart  to  be  an  unqualified 
and  universal  blessing  to  all  mankind. 

"The  sabbath  was  made  for  man,"  said  the  Lord  him- 
self ;  and  if  anywhere,  or  among  any  class,  it  fails  to  be  a 
blessing,  the  fault  lies  not  with  God,  but  with  men. 

The  "  sabbath  "  of  this  convention  is  not  the  seventh, 
but  the  first  day  of  the  week,  more  appropriately  called 
the  Lord's  Day.  The  great  mass  of  the  Church  of  Christ 
still  makes  the  distinction,  considering  that  sabbath  means 
Saturday,  and  designating  the  first  day  as  Sunday,  or  the 
Lord's  Day.  \\\  Spain  and  Italy  the  only  name  for  Satur- 
day is  sabbatta.  There  is,  I  think,  some  importance  in  the 
designation  of  this  day.  I  suppose  there  are  those  to 
whom  the  word  "  sabbath  "  is  endeared  by  many  blessed 
associations  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  this  designation  of 
the  Lord's  Day  carries  with  it,  to  many,  associations  of  a 
very  different  character,  which  make  the  day  one  of  obli- 
gation rather  than  of  privilege. 

The  difference  between  the  words  *'the  sabbath"  and 
the  '*  Lord's  Day  "  is  to  many,  in  kind  if  not  in  degree, 
very  like  that  between  the  law  and  the  gospel.  As  the 
word  ''sabbath"  is  used  to-day  among  Gentiles,  it  means 


358  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

simply  the  day  of  rest :  the  Lord's  Day  is  the  day  of 
Jesus  the  Christ.  The  sabbath  is  the  "  shalt  not  "  day,  — 
the  day  which  condemned  the  picker  of  sticks  to  death, 
and  consigned  to  severe  punishment  every  one  who  in- 
fringed its  laws.  The  Lord's  Day  is  full  of  the  blessings 
of  the  resurrection,  —  the  subsequent  meetings  of  our  Lord 
and  his  disciples,  the  weekly  collection  for  the  poor,  the 
meetings  of  the  disciples  for  common  prayer  and  praise, 
and  the  celebration  of  the  blessed  Supper.  The  "  sab- 
bath "  was  the  day  of  obligation  ;  the  Lord's  Day,  the  day 
of  privilege.  In  dwelling  upon  the  day  as  one  of  privilege, 
I  do  not  at  all  ignore  its  obligations.  They  are  very  great, 
and  every  individual  is  personally  responsible  for  his  man- 
ner of  spending  this  most  blessed  and  holy  day.  Especial 
blessings  are  promised  in  the  Word  to  them  that  honor 
the  day,  and  its  disregard  is  frequently  classed  among 
Israel's  heinous  sins.  True  it  is  that  few,  if  any,  believe 
that  the  restrictions  of  the  Jewish  sabbath  apply  to  the 
Lord's  Day  ;  but  we  may  positively  assert  that  the  bless- 
ing and  the  curse  still  attach  to  it  as  much  as  ever.  The 
greatest  good  to  body  and  soul  result  from  its  honored 
observance  ;  while,  whatever  may  be  the  physical  influence 
upon  him  who  disregards  it,  certainly  he  must  be  shut  off 
from  communion  with  Him  whose  day  it  is. 

The  Lord's  house  on  the  Lord's  Day  is  certainly  the 
place  where  the  greatest  good  is  likely  to  result  to  the 
soul,  and  every  possible  inducement  should  be  held  out 
to  bring  men  there.  It  is  the  privilege  of  every  man  to 
come  to  God's  house,  to  meet  Him  and  be  under  the  influ- 
ence of  his  Spirit.  Our  language  to  the  unbeliever  should 
be,  "You  cannot  afford  to  neglect  this  day,  or  be  absent 
from  the  place  where  God's  people  meet.  By  going  else- 
where, and  giving  yourself  up  to  simple  relaxation  and 
self-pleasing,  you  make  it  almost  impossible  for' God  to 
reach  you,  since  by  the  former  you  remove  yourself  from 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     359 

the  ordinary  influence  of  his  Spirit,  and  by  the  latter  dis- 
sipate any  extraordinary  means  which  might  influence 
you.  You  vtay  be  reached  by  the  infinite  grace  of  God  ; 
but  remember  that  we  have  been  told  of  but  one  Saul  of 
Tarsus.  Do  not  deliberately  rob  yourself  of  heaven,  and 
bring  ruin  upon  your  soul."  Such  reasoning  is  readily 
understood  by  all.  I  deprecate  the  way  in  which  some 
well-meaning  persons  approach  the  unbeliever  on  this  sub- 
ject. I  believe  that  much  harm  has  been  done,  and  preju- 
dice and  ill-will  created,  by  taxing  him  with  the  sin  of 
sabbath-breaking,  when,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  he  can 
see  no  sin  in  it.  As  well  argue  with  a  dead  man,  as  to 
try  and  convince  the  spiritually  dead  of  this  sin.  I  speak 
here  from  personal  experience.  When  a  young  man  in 
business  in  China,  I  frequently  spent  all  day  Sunday  in 
shooting,  nor  do  I  remember  having  had  any  conscien- 
tious scruples  concerning  it :  so  I  believe  that  when  the 
careless  man  is  told  that  he  is  committing  a  great  sin 
in  boating,  driving,  or  shooting  on  the  Lord's  Day,  it  is 
simply  inconceivable  to  him.  His  conscience  does  not 
trouble  him  ;  and  he  is  either  quite  untouched,  or  else  an- 
gered, by  the  accusation  of  others.  The  latter  result,  how- 
ever, is  hopeful,  since  it  indicates  that  he  is  not  quite  at 
ease  in  the  matter,  and  his  conscience  is  not  quite  silent. 
The  simply  moral  man,  because  he  has  no  spiritual  life, 
sees  and  can  see  no  harm  in  spending  the  day  of  rest  as 
he  may  please.  Perhaps  he  realizes  that  he  needs  the  rest 
and  relaxation  of  one  day  in  seven,  and  so  thinks  it  wrong 
to  pursue  his  usual  avocation  and  thus  overtax  and  injure 
himself.  While,  therefore,  he  lays  aside  his  usual  work, 
he  yet  sees  no  reason  for  attending  the  services  of  the 
church,  or  keeping  the  day  holy.  He  rests  and  recreates 
himself  as  he  pleases. 

No  argument  is  to-day  needed  to  prove  that  it  is  dis- 
astrous to  man  to  work  continuously.     The  failure  of  the 


360  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

ten  days'  experiment  of  the  French  Revolution  demon- 
strates the  wisdom  of  one  day  of  rest  in  seven  ;  the  mad- 
house and  the  grave-yard  attest  the  ruin  that  follows 
continuous  work.  This  is  so  well  understood  now,  that 
there  are  few  advocates  for  making  the  Lord's  Day  a 
working-day.  It  is  certainly  also  true,  that  to  spend  the 
day  in  dissipation  and  intemperance  will  unfit  any  man 
for  his  weekly  work  ;  but  it  does  not  by  any  means  follow 
that  mere  physical  rest  and  enjoyment  of  the  day  will 
not  fully  prepare  the  mere  worldly  man  for  his  regular 
work.  No  argument  can  be  drawn  from  the  use  of  the 
day  simply  in  amusement,  to  prove  its  physical  harm. 
The  mere  earthly  man  uses  the  day  as  he  pleases,  is 
refreshed  for  his  week's  work,  lives  as  long  as  others,  and 
is  as  well.  As  to  his  sin  in  thus  using  the  day,  the  sin  of 
sins  is  the  non-acceptance  of  Jesus  as  Saviour  and  Lord  ; 
and  until  a  man  has  done  this  the  breaking  of  the  Lord's 
Day  is  little  if  any  aggravation  of  his  guilt.  Thus  far  we 
have  been  considering  the  purely  worldly  man.  He  takes 
advantage  of  the  benefits  to  his  mind  and  body  of  the 
Lord's  Day,  but  ignores  Him  who  gave  him  the  day.  It 
is  to  him  a  day  of  blessed  opportunities,  if  he  will  but 
use  them  ;  but,  though  he  cares  for  his  body  and  mind,  he 
utterly  ignores  his  soul  and  its  requirements.  Caring  for 
the  less,  he  completely  neglects  the  infinitely  greater.  In 
fact,  so  little  is  the  life  of  the  flesh,  in  comparison  to  that 
of  the  spirit,  that  the  highest  possible  development  of  the 
former  is  to  the  latter  as  death  to  life.  So  the  Word  of 
God  describes  it.  He  who  attains  to  spiritual  life  is  said 
to  be  born  again.  Without  it  man  is  said  to  be  ''dead 
while  he  lives,"  —  dead,  too,  "in  trespasses  and  sins." 
This  life  is  said  to  be  "from  among  the  dead."  "Ye  will 
not  come  to  me,  that  ye  might  have  life,"  said  Jesus. 
"  He  that  hath  the  Son  hath  life,  and  he  that  hath  not 
the  Son  of    God   hath  not  life."     A  man,  then,  without 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     36 1 

spiritual  life,  is,  in  the  eyes  of  God,  without  life.  The 
man  who  is  spiritually  dead  feels  no  true  need  of  the 
Lord's  Day,  and  gets  along  very  well  with  the  world's 
rest  and  play-day,  just  as  he  gets  along  without  prayer, 
the  reading  of  the  Word,  or  any  meditation  upon  God. 

We  have  now  said  all  we  have  to  say  concerning  the 
relation  of  the  worldling  to  the  Lord's  Day ;  and  it  all 
applies  equally  to  men  of  every  profession  or  occupation. 
We  come  now  to  the  Christian,  and  his  relation  to  his  Lord 
and  jNIaster's  day.  He  has  been  born  again,  born  from 
above,  and  has  a  new  life  in  him,  —  a  life  which  proceeds 
from  God,  and  depends  entirely  upon  God  ;  a  spiritual  life 
which  must  be  sustained  by  spiritual  food.  To  the  Chris- 
tian the  reading  of  the  Word  is  extremely  important, 
prayer  an  absolute  necessity,  since,  without  communion 
with  God,  he  would  be,  in  the  simile  of  the  Lord  himself,  a 
branch  cut  off  to  wither. 

The  needs  of  most  Christians  keep  them  busily  occu- 
pied during  six  days  of  the  week,  and  make  the  public 
services  and  private  devotions  of  the  Lord's  Day  of  the 
greatest  importance  to  them  for  growth  in  the  knowledge 
of  God,  and  power  over  sin.  This  need,  however,  is  very 
different  in  different  classes.  For  the  clergyman,  the 
Lord's  Day  is  the  busiest  and  most  taxing,  so  that  many 
give  Saturday  or  Monday  to  rest  and  relaxation.  Thus 
their  physical  and  mental  side  is  refreshed,  while  the  very 
character  of  their  whole  work  tends  to  keep  in  fullest 
exercise  their  spiritual  life. 

The  Christian  physician  can  rarely  secure  for  himself 
the  full  benefit  of  the  pubhc  services  of  the  day  :  still,  as 
he  goes  from  place  to  place  in  his  daily  visits,  he  has  much 
time  for  meditation,  and  his  opportunities  for  spiritual 
work  at  the  bedside  of  the  sick  and  dying  are  second  only 
to  those  of  the  clergyman. 

To  the    Christian  lawyer  in  large  practice,  the  Lord's 


362  SABBATH  ESSAYS, 

Day  is  a  greater  blessing.  The  strain  upon  him  is  very- 
great  and  continuous  throughout  the  week-day,  his  faculties 
being  often  taxed  to  their  fullest  ability.  Still  his  cases 
vary  very  much,  so  that  his  brain  gets  some  relief  even 
while  it  works.  Then,  too,  his  interest,  however  intense 
in  any  case,  lasts  only  while  it  is  in  progress,  nor  does  the 
result  affect  him  personally ;  so  that,  when  he  has  done 
what  he  can,  he  simply  dismisses  the  subject,  and  clears 
his  mind  for  the  next  case. 

But,  of  all  classes  in  the  community  who  live  by  brain- 
work,  the  merchant  is  he  who  finds  the  greatest  difficulty 
in  laying  aside  the  thought  and  care  of  his  occupation. 

It  is  intense,  continuous,  absorbing,  anxious.  Each 
separate  venture  has  a  direct  effect  upon  the  welfare  of 
himself  and  family.  Unlike  the  lawyer,  the  result  is  per- 
sonal in  every  case ;  one  day  full  of  hope  in  the  prospect 
of  a  successful  venture,  on  the  next  alarmed  at  a  probable 
loss.  No  venture  is  closed  with  the  day  or  the  week  :  a 
continuous  interest  runs  through  the  whole  year. 

There  is  nothing  necessarily  elevating  in  an  occupation 
which  has  for  its  direct  object  the  making  of  money.  On 
the  contrary,  the  trials  and  temptations  of  the  calling  are 
peculiar  and  very  great.  We  frequently  hear  of  business 
honor  as  though  it  were  something  different  from  personal 
honor.  There  are  men  who  would  be  very  careful  of  what 
they  said  or  did  in  other  relations  of  life,  who  seem  to 
have  a  different  standard  for  business-transactions.  The 
old  adage,  *'A11  is  fair  in  love  and  war,"  is  accepted  as 
the  standard  for  commercial  transactions  ;  and  under  the 
name  of  sharpness,  or  even  the  softer  name  of  smartness, 
statements  are  made,  and  bargains  struck,  which  would  not 
bear  strict  scrutiny.  It  was  said  to  me  a  few  days  ago,  of 
a  man  who  stands  high  in  the  church,  that  you  could  not 
depend  on  what  he  said,  but,  if  he  put  his  name  to  paper, 
you  might  depend  upon  that :  in  other  words,  his  bond  was 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.      363 

good,  but  not  his  word.  Pre-eminently  docs  the  Christian 
merchant  need  all  the  safeguards  of  religion  to  protect 
him  from  evil. 

But,  great  as  are  the  dangers  which  beset  the  merchant, 
it  no  more  follows  that  he  should  cheat  than  that  the  law- 
yer should  lie.  There  is  no  proper  calling  that  the  Chris- 
tian may  not  follow  with  perfect  honor  ;  and,  whatever  his 
calling,  he  should  in  it  be  pre-eminent  for  every  virtue. 
There  are  glorious  living  examples  of  merchants  whose 
business  is  as  much  consecrated  to  God  as  the  study  of  the 
clergyman,  and  whose  lives  are  as  completely  devoted  to 
his  service.  Such  a  man  is  George  Williams  of  London, 
the  founder  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association, 
whose  whole  life  has  been  one  continuous  work  for  the 
Master;  and  Samuel  Morley,  M.P.,  of  London,  who,  doing 
an  enormous  business,  and  employing  a  great  number  of 
men,  is  himself  head  of  a  Christian  Association  among 
them,  attends  their  meetings,  and  encourages  them  to  aid 
him  in  conducting  a  mission  school  and  chapel  in  the 
neighborhood  of  his  warehouse.  It  is  said  of  a  Christian 
merchant  in  a  neighboring  city,  that  every  young  man 
who  has  come  into  his  employ  has  been  converted  to  God, 
one  of  them  saying  to  him,  ''  I  cannot  be  each  day  with 
you  without  seeing  that  you  love  Jesus  ;  and  I  want  also 
to  love  him."  Do  not  such  instances  make  the  Christian 
who  employs  numbers  realize  his  great  power  for  good, 
and  therefore  the  great  responsibility  that  rests  upon  him  ? 
and  he  that  employs  but  few,  that  he  may  bring  each  one 
of  them  by  his  personal  love  to  Christ }  But  there  are 
other  reasons  why  the  Christian  merchant  needs  every 
spiritual  help. 

He  is  '*a  city  set  upon  a  hill,"  and  is  watched  carefully 
and  critically ;  and  he  must  avoid  even  the  appearance  of 
evil. 

Then,  every  Christian  is  exposed,  as  is  no  other  man,  to 


364  SA  BBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

the  especial  attacks  of  Satan.  St.  Paul  says,  '*  We  wrestle 
not  with  flesh  and  blood,  but  with  wicked  spirits  in  high 
places."  However  careless  our  great  enemy  may  be  with 
reference  to  those  who  have  not  become  Christians,  and 
have  no  drawings  Christward,  he  is  very  much  in  earnest 
to  prevent  any  man  coming  to  Christ,  and  equally  ear- 
nest to  overthrow  him  when  a  Christian,  and  so  separate 
him  from  God,  or  at  least  prevent  his  good  influence 
upon  others.  Is  it  not  an  indication  of  this,  that  so  many 
Christian  men  have  become  defaulters  t  The  slightest 
departure  from  honesty  is  quickly  seen  by  the  Christian's 
great  adversary,  and  every  means  is  used  to  tempt  him 
lower  and  lower,  till  he  falls.  Should  it  be  a  matter  of 
surprise  to  us,  that,  when  the  Christian  merchant  begins 
to  tamper  with  sin,  his  danger  is  much  greater  than  that 
of  the  worldling  }  It  is  positive  gain  to  Satan,  that  the 
ungodly  man  should  be  successful  in  his  business,  and 
honored  by  the  world.  How  often  is  the  ungodly  moral 
man  pointed  out  as  an  evidence  that  a  man  does  not  need 
religion  to  be  a  good  man  !  and,  sad  to  say,  a  comparison 
is  sometimes  made  between  him  and  the  Christian,  not  at 
all  to  the  advantage  of  the  latter.  So  also  is  it  gain  to 
Satan,  that  the  Christian  should  become  a  stumbling-block 
to  others,  either  by  becoming  wedded  to  money,  or  else 
dishonest,  and  so  enable  him  and  his  followers  to  exult  in 
his  fall.  Truly  the  Christian  merchant  needs  every  spirit- 
ual help  he  can  get.  The  Apostle  Paul's  words  come  to 
him  with  peculiar  fitness,  —  **  Put  on  the  whole  armor  of 
God,  that  ye  may  be  able  to  stand  against  the  wiles  of  the 
Devil." 

The  Christian  merchant  needs  great  knowledge  of  the 
promises  of  God,  which  are  to  be  found  only  in  the  Word ; 
and  much  prayer  and  communing  with  God,  to  enable  him 
to  appropriate  and  rest  in  those  promises.  To  him  the 
Lord's  Day  should  come  in  the  fulness  of  blessing.     What- 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     365 

ever  it  may  be  to  others,  to  him  it  is  all-important.  He  is 
so  much  in  the  world  on  six  days  that  he  should  live  in 
heaven  on  the  seventh.  The  Christian  merchant  should 
transact  his  business  in  partnership  with  God ;  and  his 
Divine  Partner  will  keep  him  from  all  tricks  of  the  trade. 
There  are  those  of  whom  this  is  true,  and  upon  such  an  one 
it  will  not  be  needful  to  urge  the  blessedness  of  the  Lord's 
Day.  It  will  be  the  oasis  to  which  his  thoughts  will  travel 
in  advance.  While  he  works  with  the  gladness  and  quiet- 
ness which  is  given  by  the  continuous  sense  of  God's 
presence,  he  will  yet  haste  to  escape  from  his  cash-book 
and  ledger  to  the  joys  of  the  Lord's  Day.  His  letters 
will  remain  in  the  post-office  from  Saturday  till  Monday ; 
and  no  Sunday  newspaper  will  enter  his  house  to  turn  his 
thoughts  business-ward,  and  interfere  with  the  communion 
of  his  home  and  of  his  God.  There  is  no  such  symbol  of 
heaven  as  the  Christian  home  on  the  Lord's  Day.  Blessed 
indeed  is  that  home  where  every  tender  earthly  tie  is 
strengthened  and  purified,  because  Christ  has  come  into 
the  heart,  and  enlarged  its  capacity.  The  man  of  the 
world,  much  as  he  may  love  his  home,  knows  but  little  of 
the  wealth  of  the  capacity  of  loving  with  which  Jesus 
enriches  his  children.  Blessed  Christian  home,  where 
this  wealth  of  love  dwells  in  every  heart,  each  to  each, 
and  all  to  Him  !     The  gate  is  not  ajar  there,  but  open  wide. 

But,  besides  the  responsibilities  of  the  Christian  mer- 
chant to  himself  and  family,  he  has  those  which  belong 
to  him  in  his  public  capacity.  Of  these  some  have  been 
already  mentioned. 

First,  That  he  should  be  an  example,  in  all  his  business- 
dealings,  of  the  highest  possible  honor.  No  shadow  of 
doubt  should  rest  upon  his  reputation. 

Second,  His  personal  influence  should  be  used  upon  his 
employes  to  lead  them  to  his  Master.  This  influence  of 
an  employer  is  very  great. 


366  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

Third,  He  should  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  his 
business  on  the  Lord's  Day.  His  letters  and  the  Sunday 
newspaper  must  be  let  alone.  He  will  find  it  difficult 
enough,  even  then,  to  keep  business  out  of  his  thoughts. 
In  fact,  the  expulsive  power  of  the  love  of  Christ  alone 
can  do  it.  This  love  must  be  cultivated  by  loving  com- 
munion. 

Fourth,  He  should  use  all  his  influence  to  put  safe- 
guards about  the  Lord's  Day.  Times  are  much  changed 
with  us  ;  and  everywhere  throughout  the  land  the  effort  is 
being  made  to  lessen  its  restrictions,  and  open  new  places 
of  amusement. 

The  man  of  the  world  is  quite  consistent  with  himself 
when  he  advocates  the  open  public  library,  the  Sunday 
museum,  and  the  Sunday  concert  ;  but  the  Christian,  to 
be  equally  consistent  with  his  conviction  that  the  day  is 
given  especially  as  a  religious  blessing,  —  must  set  him- 
self against  every  thing  that  tends  to  draw  men  away  from 
the  public  and  private  worship  of  God.  He  must  protest 
against,  and  resist,  every  encroachment  upon  the  sanctity 
of  the  Lord's  Day. 

Let  me  here  say  a  few  words  with  regard  to  the  mer- 
chant's connection  with  Sunday  in  its  external  aspect,  in 
which  I  shall  consider  the  day  not  so  much  as  promotive 
of  the  salvation  and  spiritual  well-being  of  himself  and  his 
fellow-men,  as  in  the  general  effect  upon  the  physical, 
moral,  and  social  condition  of  citizens  and  communities. 
Merchants  are  observant ;  and  they  have  not  failed  to 
notice  and  to  testify  to  the  effects,  in  mercantile  affairs, 
of  regarding  and  disregarding  the  Lord's  Day. 

The  following  cases  which  I  quote  are  entirely  from 
a  little  book,  entitled  ''Church  and  State,"  and  written 
by  the  Rev.  W.  C.  Wood,  the  secretary  of  this  conven- 
tion :  — 

"  A  merchant,  who  for  twenty  years  did  a  vast"  amount  of  business, 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     367 

said,  '  Had  it  not  been  for  the  sabbath,  I  have  no  doubt  I  should 
have  been  a  maniac  long  ago.'  This  was  mentioned  in  a  company 
of  merchants,  when  one  of  them  remarked,  '  That  is  exactly  the  case 

of  Mr. .     He  used  to  say  that  the  sabbath  was  the  best  day  in  the 

week  to  plan  successful  voyages.  He  has  been  in  the  insane-asylum 
for  years,  and  will  probably  die  there.' 

"An  old  gentleman  in  Boston  said,  '  Men  do  not  gain  any  thing  by 
working  on  the  sabbath.  I  can  recollect  men  who,  when  I  was  a 
boy,  used  to  load  their  vessels  down  on  Long  Wharf,  and  keep  men 
at  work  from  morning  to  night  on  the  sabbath  day ;  but  they  have 
come  to  nothing,  their  children  have  come  to  nothing.  Depend  upon 
it,  men  do  not  gain  any  thing  in  the  end  by  working  on  the  sabbath.' 

"  Amos  Lawrence,  his  son  tells  us,  wrote  to  the  agent  of  a  manu- 
factory in  which  he  was  largely  interested :  '  We  must  make  a  good 
thing  out  of  this  establishment,  unless  you  ruin  us  by  working  on 
Sundays.  Nothing  but  works  of  necessity  should  be  done  in  holy 
time ;  and  I  am  a  firm  believer  in  the  doctrine  that  a  blessing  will 
more  surely  follow  those  exertions  which  are  made  with  reference  to 
our  religious  obligations,  than  those  made  without  such  reference. 
The  more  you  can  impress  your  people  with  a  sense  of  religious  obli- 
gation, the  better  they  will  serve  you.' 

"In  1829  the  merchant-princes  of  Boston,  New  York,  and  other 
cities,  were  among  the  foremost  in  urging  the  petitions  against  Sunday 
mails  and  mail-trains.  Among  the  names  appear  those  of  Thomas  H. 
Perkins,  Robert  G.  Shaw,  Peter  C.  Brooks,  Samuel  Appleton,  Edward 
Tuckerman,  Israel  Thorndike,  Amos  and  Abbott  Lawrence,  John 
Tappan,  and  William  Ropes.  Twenty-five  years  ago,  London  pre- 
sented a  memorial  to  the  government  against  Sunday  mails.  This 
memorial  is  headed  by  Baring  Brothers  &  Co.,  and  is  as  follows :  — 

DECLARATION. 

" '  We,  the  undersigned,  being  strongly  impressed  with  a  belief  that 
there  exists  no  greater  necessity  to  justify  the  transaction  of  the 
ordinary  business  of  receiving  and  delivering  letters  on  Sunday  in 
any  of  the  post-offices  of  the  United  Kingdom,  than  in  those  of  the 
metropolis,  do  hereby  earnestly  request  her  Majesty's  government  to 
take  into  immediate  consideration  the  expediency  and  propriety  of 
causing  the  same  to  be  discontinued  by  ordering  the  post-offices  in  the 
country  to  be  altogether  closed  on  that  day.  This  belief  is  founded 
on  the  following  facts  :  — 

"*i.  That  the  metropolis,  containing  a  population  of  twenty-two 


368  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

hundred  thousand,  has  never  experienced  any  necessity  for  the  open- 
ing of  the  metropolitan  post-offices  on  Sunday, 

" '  2.  That  the  great  acceleration  which  has  recently  taken  place  in 
the  postal  communications  throughout  the  Empire  must  necessarily 
diminish  to  a  very  great  extent  any  inconvenience  which  it  might 
otherwise  be  supposed  would  arise  from  closing  the  provincial  post- 
offices  on  Sunday.  And,  believing  that  the  effectual  preservation  of 
the  seventh  day  of  rest  from  their  ordinary  labor  is  a  principle  of  vital 
importance  to  the  physical  and  social  well-being  of  society,  whilst  the 
due  observance  of  the  Lord's  Day  is  a  duty  of  solemn  obligation  upon 
all  classes  of  the  community,  we  agree  to  take  such  measures  as  may 
appear  best  calculated  to  press  the  foregoing  considerations  on  the 
attention  of  the  government  and  the  legislature.' 

"  Similar  declarations  were  signed  by  other  leading  mercantile  firms, 
the  principal  surgeons  and  solicitors,  and  the  aldermen  of  London." 


Our  own  merchants  have  spoken  in  the  past :  let  those 
of  the  present  day  realize  their  own  great  opportunity  and 
responsibility  in  this  matter,  and  do  all  that  they  can  to  se- 
cure the  blessings  of  the  Lord's  Day  by  the  cessation  of  all 
Sunday  work  of  whatsoever  kind.  When  we  consider  the 
large  number  of  merchants  in  our  great  cities,  their  char- 
acter for  intelligence,  capacity,  and  enterprise,  the  vast 
amount  of  property  which  they  represent,  the  immense 
power  which  this  wealth  yields,  can  we  gauge  too  highly 
their  immense  responsibility  t 

The  managers  of  the  great  trunk-lines  assure  us  they 
will  gladly  stop  their  Sunday  trains, /<?r  they  do  not  pay ^ 
if  merchants  do  not  force  them  by  such  orders  as  the  fol- 
lowing :  A  merchant  telegraphs,  *'  I  forward  forty  cases, 
which  will  reach  you  on  Saturday  night.  Deliver  them 
in  such  a  place  on  Monday  morning."  It  is  evident  where 
much  of  this  blame  of  Sunday  railroading  belongs.  If 
our  merchants  were  to  take  the  stand  which  they  should 
in  the  matter  of  Sunday  freights,  mails,  and  mail-delivery, 
the  evil  would  cease  at  once,  and  God,  who  made  his  day 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.      369 


to  be  a  blessing,  would  richly  bless  them  and  their  busi- 
ness. 

Where  we  may,  we  must  legislate.  Where  we  may  not, 
we  must  at*  least,  as  we  do  here  in  this  convention,  let 
the  voice  of  the  Church  in  this  Commonwealth  be  clearly 
heard  in  behalf  of  a  sanctified  Lord's  Day. 


370  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 


THE  SABBATH  THE  POOR  MAN'S  BENEFACTOR. 

BY   REV.    EDWm   B.   WEBB,   D.D.,   OF   BOSTON. 

As  the  vast  majority  of  the  human  race  are,  and  always 
have  been,  and  probably  always  will  be,  poor,  this  topic 
is  one  of  no  ordinary  interest.  However  theoretical  or 
speculative  other  topics,  this  is  altogether  practical,  real, 
and  present,  commending  itself  to  the  great  mass  of  man- 
kind. 

I.  And,  first  of  all,  the  sabbath  is  the  poor  man  s  benefac- 
tor because  it  brings  him  needed  rest.  ...  It  has  been 
demonstrated  too  often  to  need  repetition  here,  that  all 
men  —  all  the  world's  great  weary  toiling  masses  —  must 
have  a  weekly  as  well  as  a  daily  rest. 

But  the  hardest  work  done  in  this  world  is  not  the  work 
of  the  hands.  The  mind  is  most  to  be  considered.  And 
in  regard  to  the  mind  the  testimony  of  physicians  is  this  : 
"  From  neglecting  proper  intervals  of  rest,  the  vascular 
excitement  of  the  brain,  which  always  accompanies  ac- 
tivity of  mind,  has  never  time  to  subside ;  and  a  restless 
irritability  of  temper  and  disposition  comes  on,  attended 
with  sleeplessness  and  anxiety,  for  which  no  external 
cause  can  be  assigned."  ''  If  this  fatigue  and  over-excited 
condition  of  the  brain  be  not  speedily  arrested,  it  soon 
terminates,  according  to  the  constitution  or  circumstances 
of  the  individual  case,  in  derangement,  palsy,  apoplexy, 
fever,  suicide,  or  permanent  weakness."  Do  those  men 
who  work  the  year  round  without  a  rest,  and  boast  that 
their  best  work  is  done  on  the  sabbath,  know  what  the 
peril  of  this  work  is .''  — "  derangement,  palsy,  apoplexy, 
fever,  suicide,  imbecility  !  " 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     3/1 


Such  is  the  testimony  of  the  highest  medical  authority 
concerning  the  absolute  necessity  for  rest,  —  rest  weekly  as 
well  as  rest  daily.  And  the  authority,  the  institution,  the 
Lawgiver,  that  provides  this  needed  rest,  is  a  benefactor. 
The  sabbath,  set  apart  and  established  and  made  sacred 
by  the  Creator's  repeated  commands,  —  the  sabbath  urged 
upon  man  by  the  constitutional  necessities  of  his  nature, 
as  well  as  by  the  weight  of  infinite  authority,  —  furnishes 
this  needed  rest ;  and  therefore  the  sabbath  is  the  bene- 
factor of  mankind,  and  especially  the  poor  man's  bene- 
factor. 

The  poor  man's  benefactor  especially.  For  the  rich 
man  may  rest  when  he  chooses,  may  have  many  holidays  ; 
but  the  poor  man,  compelled  by  the  necessities  of  his 
position  to  labor  six  days  in  the  week,  must  welcome  the 
sabbath  as  his  special  boon  and  blessing.  And  how  rich 
the  benefaction  !  The  love  of  a  Father  for  his  children  is 
in  the  appointment  of  this  day  ;  the  wisdom  and  skill  of 
the  Good  Physician  are  in  the  appointment  of  this  day ; 
the  wisdom  and  good-will  of  the  best  human  government 
are  in  it ;  mercy  and  the  means  of  redemption  are  in  it ; 
the  reflection  and  resemblance  of  heaven's  sweet  rest  and 
joy  are  in  it.  Welcome!  —  let  all  tongues  join  in  saying 
—  welcome  the  beneficent  rest  of  the  sabbath  ! 

Only  let  the  conviction  be  distinctly  and  indelibly  en- 
graven upon  all  minds,  that  the  sabbath,  to  give  this  essen- 
tial and  universal  rest,  must  be  accepted  as  of  universal 
obligation.  Instituted  at  the  birth  of  the  race,  before  men 
were  divided  into  nations  ;  having  its  reasons  in  necessi- 
ties peculiar  to  none,  but  common  to  all  ;  designed  for  the 
benefit  of  mankind,  —  the  sabbath  must  be  received  and 
kept  by  all,  in  order  that  it  may  be  enjoyed  by  any.  This 
is  a  consideration  that  must  not  be  overlooked,  and  cannot 
well  be  overstated.  And,  that  it  may  be  kept  and  enjoyed 
by  all,  the  day  must  be  accepted  as  an  appointment  of 


372  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

God,  and  not  merely  as  a  necessity  learned  from  human 
experience  ;  as  a  command  of  God,  and  not  as  an  optional 
good  ;  as  binding  the  conscience,  and  not  merely  as  a 
better  means  to  health  and  prosperity.  The  nature  of  the 
obligation  to  keep  the  sabbath  is  such  that  the  appoint- 
ment of  the  day  merely  as  a  civil  law  can  hardly  be  main- 
tained. The  higher  ground  of  divine  authority  being* 
ample  and  indestructible,  it  is  better  —  as  it  is  indispensa- 
ble—  to  rest  the  appointment  of  the  sabbath  on  that.  For 
such  are  the  complications  of  society,  such  the  immediate 
interests  of  individuals,  such  the  greed  of  selfishness,  such 
the  reckless  eagerness  of  passion  and  pleasure,  that,  unless 
recognized  as  of  divine  authority,  the  keeping  of  the  sab- 
bath becomes  a  matter  of  individual  interest  or  taste,  or 
judgment  or  prejudice.  Suppose  the  divine  authority  to 
be  withdrawn,  or  ignored,  or  denied,  by  the  majority  :  then, 
notwithstanding  the  constitutional  necessity  for  rest,  the 
keeping  of  the  day  becomes  optional.  Become  optional, 
work  and  play  are  sure  to  be  chosen  by  some.  And  if  one 
city  opens  its  concerts  and  theatres  on  the  sabbath,  then 
all  cities  will  open  concerts  and  theatres.  If  one  furnish- 
ing-store  opens  ''for  accommodation,"  all  furnishing-stores 
must  open  ;  and  the  army  of  clerks  and  porters  must  plod 
on  seven  days  a  week,  the  year  round  —  "  seven  days  a 
week  for  six  days'  wages  ! "  If  one  factory  rings  its  bell 
to  summon  the  weary  workers  on  sabbath  morning  as  on 
other  days,  all  factories  must,  in  time,  do  the  same  thing. 
If  one  company  run  horse-cars  on  the  sabbath  to  the 
forest  beer-garden,  all  rival  companies  must  run  ;  and  all 
conductors  and  drivers  must  work,  or  lose  their  places. 
All  gravitate  towards  the  same  level. 

It  is  the  sabbath,  therefore,  as  established  and  main- 
tained by  the  divine  authority,  of  universal  obligation, 
securing  to  all  perpetual  renewal  of  strength,  vigor,  and 
freshness,  which  is  God's  benefaction  and  blessing  upon 
the  poor. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY,      373 

II.  Secondly,  the  sabbath  is  the  poor  mans  benefactor  be- 
cause it  furnishes  him  with  the  means  of  mental  enrichment 
and  elevation. 

Every  thing  depends  upon  the  mind.  Leave  the  mind 
barren  and  puerile,  and  nothing  goes  well :  make  the  mind 
strong  and  rich,  and  every  thing  goes  well.  The  poor 
man's  promotion  in  life  does  not  come  of  indolence  or 
error,  but  of  mind,  developed  and  disciplined.  There  must 
be  the  plant  in  the  head  before  the  increase  in  the  hand. 
Many  benevolent  efforts  are  made,  many  co-operative  so- 
cieties formed,  for  the  poor  man's  benefit.  These  must 
be  commended  as  in  many  ways  helpful.  But,  for  the 
most  part,  they  are  superficial  and  delusive.  They  at- 
tempt to  make  the  fruit  good  without  first  making  the  tree 
good. 

The  poor  maybe  divided  roughly  into  two  classes,  —  the 
vandal  poor  and  the  virtuous  poor.  Both  have  a  benefac- 
tor in  the  Christian  sabbath  ;  the  one  class  in  the  means 
of  mental  revolution  and  advancement,  the  other  in  the 
means  of  mental  nourishment  and  growth. 

A  family  which  has  never  known  the  sabbath  has  coarse 
tastes,  low  affinities,  and  minds  barren  of  thoughts  of  God 
and  immortality.  Put  them  into  a  house,  five  years  ago 
the  home  of  the  refined  in  the  court  end  of  the  town,  and 
how  long  before  all  traces  of  its  former  elegance  are 
obliterated  1  There  is  vandalism  in  the  mind ;  and  the 
sabbath  furnishes  just  the  means,  the  best,  the  most  effi- 
cient, the  divinely-appointed  means,  of  eradicating  it,  and 
at  the  same  time  of  supplying  new  thoughts  and  new 
themes  and  a  new  life.  It  is  good  to  give  a  poor  man 
a  house  and  grounds,  but  vastly  better  to  give  him  mind 
and  purpose  to  earn  and  maintain  a  house  and  grounds. 
You  may  toss  a  sick  eagle  into  the  air;  but  give  him 
health,  and  he  will  himself  ride  above  the  clouds,  and  look 
the  sun  in  the  face.     The  rich  man  may  give  every  day 


374  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

to  study  and  culture.  The  poor  man  can  give  only  his 
sabbaths.  His  sabbaths,  accepted  and  used  according  to 
God's  design,  furnish  him  with  the  needed  intellectual 
revolution,  refinement,  and  wealth.  Vandalism  cannot  live 
in  one  who  accepts  and  uses  the  sabbath  aright. 

The  sabbath  is  also  the  benefactor  of  the  virtuous  poor. 
Its  frequent,  regular  recurrence,  like  a  celestial  visitor, 
tells  of  higher  spheres  and  loftier  spirits,  and  has  a  mighty 
power  to  sustain  and  nourish  noble  principles  and  holy 
aspirations,  and  presents  the  motives  which  buoy  a  man 
up  above  the  cold,  ingulfing  waters  of  poverty.  Look 
into  our  New-England  parishes  :  what  numbers  of  young 
men  come  forth  from  the  homes  of  the  virtuous  poor  to 
become  leading  merchants,  bankers,  professors,  lawyers, 
ministers,  and  missionaries  !  As  Dr.  Spring  says,  "■  Many 
a  sleeping  genius,  reposing  within  the  curtains  of  its  own 
unconscious  powers,  has  been  awakened  to  hope  and  ac- 
tion by  the  instructions  of  the  sanctuary.  It  were  a  curi- 
ous but  not  unprofitable  inquiry  to  institute,  how  many 
well-educated  men,  in  Christian  lands,  have  received  the 
first  impulse  and  suggestion  in  their  lofty  career  from 
the  instructions  of  the  sabbath."  And  why  not }  The 
growing  of  an  oak  from  an  acorn,  in  moisture  and  sun- 
shine, is  not  more  natural  than  the  development  of  mind 
in  the  religious  keeping  of  the  sabbath. 

The  mind  enlarges  towards  the  proportions  of  the 
themes  which  it  dwells  upon.  And  what  themes  the  sab- 
bath presents  for  contemplation  and  study  ! — the  majesty 
and  manifold  perfections  of  the  Creator ;  the  principles, 
rewards,  and  penalties  of  the  divine  government ;  the 
relations  of  this  life,  checkered  with  smiles  and  tears,  and 
rent  with  antagonisms,  to  the  life  unseen  and  everlasting; 
the  dark  consciousness  of  sin,  and  the  hope  inspired  by 
the  remedy  of  the  gospel,  — ah  !  what  themes  !  themes  to 
arouse  every  latent  energy  of  thought ;  truths  by  which 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     3/5 

the  soul  is  seized  in  a  grasp  from  which  it  cannot  fly,  and 
with  which  it  wrestles,  and  grows  strong  while  wrestling. 
Nothing  develops,  quickens,  enlarges,  and  enriches  the 
human  mind,  like  the  subjects  of  thought  that  the  sab- 
bath brings  with  it.  And,  as  the  poor  man  is  limited  to 
this  as  his  only  rest  and  opportunity,  so,  in  this  respect,  in 
giving  a  day  for  mental  development  and  vigor  in  the  con- 
templation of  the  most  divine  and  enlivening  themes,  the 
sabbath  is  the  poor  man's  benefactor. 

III.  The  sabbath  is  the  poor  mans  benefactor  because  it 
gives  him  moral  invigoration  and  elevation. 

All  history  and  all  experience  testify  that  such  are 
man's  inward  susceptibilities  and  lusts,  and  outward  temp- 
tations, that,  unrestrained,  he  gravitates  to  the  earth,  and 
becomes  earthy.  In  the  wilderness,  in  the  mines,  on  the 
sea,  he  needs  the  society  that  is  fashioned  and  vitalized  by 
the  law  of  the  sabbath  to  keep  him  up.  Crowd  the  sab- 
bath out  of  our  homes,  and  all  vices  will  come  in  ;  one 
like  a  thief,  to  steal  your  jewels  ;  another,  like  a  plague,  to 
destroy  bloom  and  beauty ;  another,  like  famine,  to  con- 
sume your  substance  ;  another,  like  a  mocking  fiend,  to 
sneer  at  piety  and  defy  the  Almighty.  Exclude  the  sab- 
bath, and  over  the  cemetery's  gate  will  be  written,  "  Death 
is  an  eternal  sleep  ;  "  the  churches  will  become  theatres 
and  arenas  where  the  blood  of  gladiators  and  wild  beasts 
will  flow  for  the  entertainment  of  the  people. 

Moral  principle  is  the  foundation  of  all  family  life,  good 
neighborhood,  and  just  government.  But,  just  as  your 
best  fruit-trees  degenerate,  so  the  moral  principle  runs 
down.  Every  individual,  every  community,  needs  the 
regular,  frequent,  and  powerful  appliances  of  a  moral  edu- 
cation. The  conscience  must  be  invigorated,  and  the 
sources  of  the  whole  moral  nature  must  be  constantly  re- 
newed. The  sabbath,  spent  as  God  designed  it  should  be, 
just  meets  this  necessity.     Other  men  might  possibly  com- 


37^  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

pensate  for  the  loss  of  it  by  devoting  some  portion  of  the 
week  to  the  study  of  ethics  and  religion  ;  but  the  poor 
man  has  no  other  adequate  time  for  the  education  of 
his  moral  nature.  The  most  perfect  system  of  ethics  — 
by  confession  of  the  infidel  even  —  is  taught  every  sab- 
bath day  in  our  churches.  The  moral  teaching  of  the 
ancient  philosophers  is  a  muddy  pool,  compared  with  the 
pure  fountain  of  the  gospel.  And  the  Christian  sabbath 
is  for  the  unfolding  and  applying  of  this  perfect  morality. 

Moreover,  the  sabbath  presents  the  conditions  most 
favorable  in  all  respects,  for  impressing,  arousing,  and 
enthroning  the  moral  sense.  These  moral  instructions 
come  regularly  at  a  time  of  rest ;  they  are  given  on  a 
day  that  has  twined  around  it,  for  most  men,  tender  and 
sacred  associations  ;  they  are  given  in  a  reverent  assembly 
made  up  of  families,  and  friends,  and  neighbors  ;  and  they 
are  given  with  clearness  and  with  frequency.  As  a  vigor- 
ous and  comprehensive  writer  said,  many  years  ago,  *'  In 
order  to  give  public  conscience  a  quick,  discerning  eye, 
and  to  pour  upon  it  the  only  steady  and  unerring  light, 
that  of  divine  truth,  the  fixed  and  eternal  distinctions  be- 
tween moral  and  religious  right  and  wrong  are  clearly  and 
strongly  defined ;  and  not  only  in  the  case  of  those  which 
are  broad  and  palpable,  but  also  in  the  case  of  those  which 
are  minute  and  delicate,  so  that  men,  if  they  will,  may 
walk  with  safety  through  even  those  regions  of  action 
where  the  separating  grounds  between  right  and  wrong 
are  most  narrow  and  difficult." 

And  still  further,  this  morality,  so  essential  to  the  indi- 
vidual character,  and  to  the  continued  prosperity  of  every 
country,  is  taught  rationally  ;  the  boundless  evils  of  wrong- 
doing are  portrayed  in  lurid  light,  and  the  benefits  of  right- 
doing  affectionately  spread  out ;  and,  besides  all  this,  the 
■teachings  of  the  sabbath  are  presented  as  under  the  eye  of 
a  holy,  heart-searching  God,  and  sanctioned,  as  no  other 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     3/7 

teachings  are,  by  the  unutterable  solemnities  and  retribu- 
tions of  a  coming  judgment-clay. 

It  seems  safe  to  say,  therefore,  that  as  the  means  of  en- 
lightening, invigorating,  and  confirming  the  moral  nature, 
the  sabbath  is  the  poor  man's  benefactor.  God's  wisdom 
and  beneficence  are  in  the  appointment  of  the  day  :  God's 
blessings  are  upon  the  keeping  of  it.  Mental  and  moral 
superiority  is  the  inheritance  of  the  people  who  remember 
the  sabbath  day  to  keep  it  holy.  They  shall  ride  upon  the 
high  places  of  the  earth. 

IV.  Again,  the  sabbath  is  the  poor  man's  benefactor  be- 
cause it  brings  before  him  the  pattern  of  a  right  and  perfect 
life. 

The  sabbath,  by  bringing  before  us  the  Lord  of  the 
sabbath,  the  quickening  central  thought  and  theme  of 
the  Christian  sanctuary,  gives  to  the  poor  man  what  all  the 
treasures  of  wealth,  and  of  art,  and  of  learning,  and  of 
experience  cannot  give  him,  —  the  true  ideal,  aim,  and 
end  of  life. 

V.  The  sabbath  is  the  poor  mans  benefactor  because  it 
brings  before  him  the  true  principles  and  relations  of  right 
living  ;  in  other  words ^  the  true  idea  of  humait  society. 

This  proposition  implies,  as  all  that  goes  before  implies, 
that  the  sabbath  is  a  day  for  religious  instruction  and  wor- 
ship. If  the  routine  of  ordinary  work  be  sponged  from 
the  day,  and  the  sabbath  be  left  a  blank, — a  day  of  idle- 
ness, —  then  is  it  a  curse,  and  not  a  blessing.  If  the  sab- 
bath is  that  the  pleasure-seeker  may  multiply  his  pleasures, 
and  the  good  liver  prolong  his  dinners,  then  I  am  dumb. 
Or,  if  the  sabbath  is  that  the  Frenchman  may  dance  his 
bears,  or  the  great  show.man  manoeuvre  his  circus,  and 
excursionists  throng  the  cars  and  boats  and  beaches,  then 
I  am  no  advocate  of  a  sabbath  :  the  day  is  a  lowering,  and 
not  an  uplifting,^  of  society.     Better  a  night  of  labor  than 


3/8  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

of  debauchery ;  better  the  work-day  than  such  a  sabbath. 
The  beneficent  sabbath  is  that  which  is  given  to  religious 
instruction  and  worship.  This  is  the  day  which,  with  its 
rest  and  elevation,  its  acknowledgment  of  duties  and  rela- 
tions, brings  the  true  principles  and  pattern  of  human  so- 
ciety. The  kingdom  of  heaven,  as  introduced  by  the  Lord 
of  the  sabbath,  is  the  ideal  of  the  perfect  social  condition. 
"Thy  will  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven,"  is  the  goal 
of  all  true  aim  and  right  progress.  "  Love  thy  neighbor 
as  thyself,"  is  the  divine  specific  for  the  highest,  happiest, 
human  society. 

That  poor  men,  the  world  over,  are  dissatisfied,  restless, 
and  ready  for  something,  —  they  know  not  what,  —  there 
is  too  much  evidence.  The  German  army  did  not  burn 
Paris  ;  but  a  band  of  her  own  citizens,  organized,  and  as- 
piring to  be  the  government,  saturated  the  palaces  and 
public  buildings  with  petroleum-oil,  and  fired  them  for 
inevitable  destruction.  Their  object  was  to  destroy  every 
trace  and  memorial  of  previous  government,  to  equalize 
all  classes  in  the  community,  distribute  property,  and 
organize  society  anew  !  But  what  is  the  new  society  to 
be  1  After  what  pattern,  and  on  what  principles,  is  it 
to  be  organized  } 

Only  two  years  ago, — in  the  summer  of  1877,  —  the 
workmen,  fed  out  of  the  earnings  of  our  great  railways, 
seized  the  property,  tore  up  the  rails,  burned  the  cars, 
freight-houses,  and  stations,  and  crippled  the  engines. 
The  men  intrusted  with  the  safety  and  success  of  the 
roads,  acting  the  part  of  traitors  and  robbers,  assumed  to 
make  right  and  exercise  control  over  the  courts  and  the 
commonwealth.  Well,  suppose  these  men  triumph,  and 
divide  the  property.  Then  what }  Of  course,  revolution- 
ize all  forms  of  law  and  justice.  Then  what.-*  Organize 
society  anew.  But  on  what  basis }  after  what  rules  and 
pattern }     Grant  that  something  is  wrong  in  the  present 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     379 

condition  of  society  ;  grant  that  this  restless,  violent,  im- 
perious feeling  of  communistic  organizations  is  provoked 
by  sore  and  protracted  grievances :  are  destruction,  arson, 
and  murder  going  to  secure  any  thing  better  ?  The  world 
over,  he  that  sows  the  wind  must  reap  the  whirlwind  ! 

The  same  spirit  of  destruction  and  terror,  and  frenzy  to 
control,  is  seen  in  other  countries,  smothered  and  kept 
down  for  the  present,  but  ready  apparently  to  break  forth 
any  hour.  How  Russia  grapples  with  the  burning,  re- 
morseless Nihilism  of  her  unhappy  millions  !  Germany, 
too,  has  her  half-concealed  orders,  whose  presence  and  pur- 
pose are  flashed  from  the  pistol  that  was  loaded  in  secret 
for  Chancellor  Bismarck  or  Emperor  William.  In  every 
country  are  secret  organizations,  trades-unions,  societies, 
that,  Samson-like,  blindly  grasp  at  the  columns  and  heave 
at  the  foundations  of  the  structure  whose  fall  inevitably 
involves  their  own  ruin.  Our  mines,  too,  have  their 
Molly  Maguires,  and  our  cities  their  operatives  who  refuse 
to  work  except  for  the  price  their  agent  may  dictate,  and 
declare  it  death  for  others  to  take  their  places.  The 
Pacific  coast,  with  its  working-men's  combinations,  and 
factions,  and  revenges,  shows  us  what  uncertain  ground 
may  be  beneath  our  feet.  But  what  is  the  aim  of  all  these 
restless,  revolutionary  measures  ">  What  would  these  poor 
men  come  at  1  How  many  of  them  have  any  idea  of  the 
first  simple  principles  of  social  prosperity  and  happiness, 
which  the  history  of  communities  and  nations  indorses  as 
right,  and  safe,  and  good  t  Suppose  capital  is  despotic  : 
is  labor,  combined  and  concentrated,  a  despotism  less  cruel 
and  arbitrary  "l  Does  opposing  wrong  with  wrong  afford 
that  satisfaction  and  repose  which  are  the  conditions  of 
prosperity,  and  that  security  which  is  essential  to  the 
enjoyment  of  one's  labor  t  Society  has  wants  unsatisfied  ; 
but  feeding  men  as  paupers,  or  forcing  them  into  places 
for  which  they  have  no  qualification,  will  not  fill  the  land 


38o  SABBATH  ESSAYS. 

with  plenty.  Society  is  afflicted  with  manifold  evils, 
divided  by  conflicting,  selfish  interests,  torn  with  sus- 
picion, jealousy,  and  discord.  Peace  and  prosperity  are 
not  to  come  of  brute  force  and  blind  sortie.  By  what 
means  are  these  evils  and  troubles  to  be  avoided  or  over- 
come }  By  what  means,  individual  or  combined,  is  the 
true,  happy  ideal  to  be  obtained  }  This  is  the  question 
to  be  answered  by  the  restless,  imperious,  revolutionary 
spirit  that  is  showing  itself  in  Nihilism,  Communism, 
Socialism,  and  Unionism. 

Who  has  the  answer }  Where  shall  they  go  for  it  "i 
To  the  Christian  sabbath  and  the  Christian  sanctuary. 
Jesus  has  taught  poor  men  the  prayer  to  be  offered,  —  the 
prayer  that  springs  from  depths  that  all  our  philosophy 
is  too  shallow  to  fathom,  and  rises  to  heights  and  memo- 
ries known  only  to  Him,  —  "  Thy  kingdom  come  ;  thy 
will  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven."  And  one  great 
part  of  the  sabbath  service  is  to  show  men  how  this  will 
is  done  in  heaven,  and  how  it  may  be  done  on  earth,  that 
thus  the  face  of  earth  may  reflect  the  happiness  of  heaven. 
Jesus  has  left  us  the  germs  and  elemental  forces  that  must 
enter  into  every  settled,  happy,  human  society.  The  king- 
dom which  he  came  to  establish  is  charged  with  vital 
powers  which  are  to  turn  the  world  upside  down  :  and  the 
sabbath  is  essential  to  the  development  and  spreading  of 
these  seminal,  spiritual  forces.  The  telegraphic  instru- 
ment makes  available  the  hidden  electrical  forces  of 
nature  for  the  service  of  mankind.  The  sabbath  is  to  the 
^transcendent  forces  of  Christianity  what  that  instrument 
is  to  the  hidden  forces  of  the  material  world,  —  the  means 
of  making  available  on  human  society  all  the  gracious  and 
vitalizing  powers  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  It  surpasses 
all  other  means  of  benefiting  the  human  race.  It  is  the 
divinely-appointed  instrument  of  communication. 

Consult   experience   and   history.     What    is    the   great 


THE  SABBA  TH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY.     38 1 

enemy  of  human  society  ?  Mutual  hostility.  But  the 
new  society  which  the  Lord  of  the  sabbath  places  before 
us  is  a  society  organized  in  love.  What  is  the  fiery  ambi- 
tion of  men,  wasting  and  imbittering  life  }  To  rise  above 
and  subdue  each  other.  But  the  Lord  of  the  sabbath  says, 
**  Whosoever  will  be  great  among  you  shall  be  your  min- 
ister ;  and  whosoever  of  you  will  be  the  chiefest,  shall  be 
servant  of  all."  Men  overreach  each  other,  but  the  Lord 
of  the  sabbath  says,  *'  Exact  no  more  than  is  appointed 
you."  Men  make  false  representations,  and  unite  in  arro- 
gant combinations,  and  force  each  other  to  give  more  and 
take  less  than  is  due  ;  but  the  Lord  of  the  sabbath  says, 
'*  Do  violence  to  no  man ;  and  be  content  with  your 
wages." 

Vice,  too,  —  dishonesty,  duplicity,  idleness,  intemper- 
ance, lewdness,  —  is  the  enemy  of  society.  These  impov- 
erish the  rich,  enfeeble  the  strong,  and  eat  out  every  noble 
element  of  manhood.  But  against  these  vices  the  Lord  of 
the  sabbath  repeatedly  utters  his  condemnation,  backed  by 
infinite  authority  and  sanction  of  law. 

Some  people  imagine  we  have  the  means  of  arresting 
all  these  evils,  and  of  attaining  a  perfect  society,  in  open 
libraries  and  art-galleries,  colleges  and  schools.  But  Lid- 
don,  in  a  Bampton  Lecture,  says,  "  When  Greek  thought 
was  keenest,  and  Greek  art  most  triumphantly  creative, 
.  .  .  Greek  society  was  penetrated  through  and  through 
by  an  invisible  enemy,  more  fatal  in  its  ravages  to  thought, 
to  art,  to  freedom,  than  the  sword  of  any  Persian  or  Mace- 
donian foe."  All  the  wonderful  art  and  oratory  of  Greece 
could  not  give  them  the  society  which  they  craved,  nor 
even  preserve  what  they  had.  Nor  will  schools  of  art  and 
education  give  to  the  rising  nations  of  to-day  the  society 
they  crave.  They  must  come  to  the  Lord  of  the  sab- 
bath. 

Others  think  that  society  is  to  be  perfected,  relieved 


382  SABBA  TH  ESS  A  YS. 

of  its  evils,  enriched  with  virtues,  by  the  organization  of 
lodges  and  guilds,  and  charitable  associations.  But  the 
brightest  ray  of  excellence  in  any  one  of  these  is  only  the 
reflection  of  a  common  ray  in  the  perfect  society  which 
the  Lord  of  the  sabbath  has  introduced.  Oppressed,  worn 
out  with  toil,  disheartened,  the  poor  man  may  find  a  little 
sympathy  and  cheer  in  these  organizations.  But  the  in- 
stinct of  the  soul  unsatisfied  reaches  out  after  something 
better.  The  ear  still  longs  for  the  true  sound  :  the  eye 
wanders  around  the  horizon  for  the  divine  model,  for  that 
society  in  which  all  animosities,  evils,  and  vices  are  sup- 
pressed, and  all  virtues  and  graces  and  affections  nur- 
tured ;  a  society  organized  in  love  and  not  in  hate,  in 
mutual  helpfulness,  not  in  rivalry ;  a  society  operated  in 
the  spirit  of  benevolence,  not  in  the  spirit  of  selfishness ;  a 
society  where  every  one  is  aiming  to  minister  unto  others, 
and  not  demanding  to  be  ministered  unto  :  this  is  the 
divine  pattern,  the  pattern  towards  which  the  sabbath 
urges  and  contributes  as  does  no  other  institution.  Jesus 
is  the  perfect  pattern  for  the  individual ;  and  his  kingdom, 
as  he  introduced  it,  the  model  of  a  perfect,  happy,  human 
society.  Whatever  is  needful  to  stimulate  industry,  and 
satisfy  aspiration,  is  here.  Whatever  is  needful  to  pre- 
serve the  good,  and  still  evolve  the  better,  is  here.  Just 
in  proportion  as  a  community  is  leavened  with  the  divine 
leaven  of  sabbath  teaching,  fashioned  after  that  pattern  of 
society  which  the  sabbath,  kept  holy  to  the  end  of  it,  tends 
to  create,  is  it  happy,  peaceful,  and  prosperous.  And  the 
sabbath  is  the  day  for  the  poor  man  to  study  this  perfect 
model,  while,  with  his  neighbors  and  fellow-Christians,  he 
goes  up  to  pray,  *'  Thy  kingdom  come  ;  thy  will  be  done 
on  earth  as  in  heaven,"  and  learns  to  love  his  neighbor  as 
himself. 

And  the  urgent  work  for  the  Church  as  regards  poor 
men,  the  world  over,  in  things  temporal  as  well  as  spiritual, 


THE  SABBATH  IN  THE  STATE  AND  SOCIETY,     383 

is  to  give  them  the  Christian  sabbath,  and  the  words  of 
wisdom  and  love  spoken  by  the  Lord  of  the  sabbath. 

"  Blessings  abound  where'er  he  reigns  : 
The  prisoner  leaps  to  loose  his  chains ; 
The  weary  find  eternal  rest, 
And  all  the  sons  of  want  are  blest." 


ADDRESSES. 


THE    SUBJECTS,    WITH    ONE    OR    TWO     EXCEPTIONS,    WERE    OF    THE 

speakers'   OWN   CHOOSING.      THE  ADDRESSES   ARE  GIVEN 

ONLY  IN  THEIR  SUBSTANCE. 


THE  SABBATH  NOT  GONE,  AND   NOT  GOING. 

BY   REV.   A.   H.   PLUMB. 

Mr.  President,  —  If  this  Sabbath  Convention  appear 
like  a  council  of  war,  it  is  a  council  of  the  victorious  lead- 
ers of  a  conquering  King.  It  ought  to  be  the  keynote 
of  this  meeting,  it  ought  to  be  the  courageous  thought 
of  all  Christians,  that  the  Lord's  Day  is  not  gone,  and  the 
Lord's  Day  is  not  going. 

One  good  reason  for  cherishing  that  thought  is  that  we 
still  have  the  mighty  power  of  Christian  example  in  keeping 
the  sabbath  holy  to  the  Lord. 

Seven  thousand  who  have  not  bowed  the  knee  to  Baal } 
Millions  upon  millions,  everywhere,  who  hail  the  return  of 
the  sabbath  with  joy,  and  keep  it  a  holy  day. 

In  a  recent  tour  through  the  West,  I  visited  regions 
with  which  I  was  familiar  a  score  of  years  ago ;  and  even 
a  casual  observation  revealed  a  cheering  growth  of  certain 
forms  of  aggressive  Christian  work.  I  saw  an  enlarged 
and  increasingly  intelligent  attention  paid  to  sabbath- 
school  instruction,  to  young  men's  Christian  associations, 
and  to  various  departments  of  Christian  work  in  which 
women  are  engaged. 

384 


THE  SABBATH  NOT  GONE.  385 

I  remarked  with  great  interest,  that,  in  places  where  the 
Bible  and  the  sabbath  were  formerly  in  considerable  disre- 
pute among  leading  men,  now  many  enterprising  and  suc- 
cessful men  of  business,  bankers,  merchants,  and  others, 
are  active  in  sabbath  schools  :  they  go  to  the  institute  at 
Chautauqua,  and  talk  about  it  in  their  circles  of  influence. 

A  few  days  since  in  a  distant  city  I  followed  reverently 
to  his  grave  an  honored  friend,  sixty  years  a  member  of 
one  church,  sixty  years  an  occupant  of  one  pew.  There 
he  brought  his  youthful  bride  ;  there  in  later  years  their 
children,  one  after  another,  gave  themselves  to  Christ; 
there  some  of  them  have  been  given  in  marriage ;  and 
there  in  that  pew  almost  every  sabbath  all  the  while  sat 
that  man,  his  head  becoming  silvered  with  age ;  and  at 
last  it  was  the  devout  men  of  that  church  carried  him  to 
his  burial.  Three  thousand  sabbaths  he  lifted  up  his  tes- 
timony for  the  sanctity  of  the  day.  Such  an  example  of 
steadfastness  is  an  inspiration. 

Far  away  in  the  North-west  I  met  a  gentleman  of  wealth 
and  culture,  a  graduate  of  an  Eastern  college,  residing  on 
the  borders  of  a  wilderness  on  account  of  his  large  landed 
interests  near;  and,  as  often  as  the  sabbath  returns,  he 
and  his  accomplished  wife  gather  with  their  neighbors,  a 
dozen  or  a  score,  some  of  them  in  the  rudest  attire,  in  a 
rough  little  schoolhouse  in  the  bushes,  and  there,  opening 
the  Bible  with  song  and  prayer,  they  seek  with  all  the 
solemnity  and  earnestness  in  their  power  to  worship  God. 
It  is  the  habit  of  their  lives.  Just  so  they  did  when  Sun- 
day came  in  Philadelphia,  in  Paris,  wherever  they  have 
lived.     Such  example,  men  reverence  :  they  cannot  help  it. 

What  is  culture  worth,  what  are  all  the  blessings  of  a 
high  civilization  worth,  if  they  do  not  first  of  all  inspire 
in  a  man  some  sense  of  obligation  to  God.?  —  a  sense  that 
will  lead  him,  wherever  the  sabbath  finds  him,  to  lift  up 
the  banner  of  allegiance  to  God,  to  go  to  church,  and  to 


386  ADDRESSES. 


go  not  so  much  for  what  he  is  to  get,  as  for  what  he  is 
to  give,  —  tribute  to  God.  "  Let  my  prayer  be  set  forth 
before  thee  as  incense,  and  the  lifting-up  of  my  hands  as 
the  evening  sacrifice." 

Friends,  are  we  not  almost  tired  to  death  of  the  list- 
less, lifeless,  vapid  spirit  of  much  of  our  modern  culture  "i 
Everywhere  around  us  we  have  young  men  and  women, 
called  the  fairest  products  of  our  civilization,  easy-going, 
cultivated,  full  of  aesthetic  knowledge,  very  amiable  and 
pleasant  companions,  but  with  no  grasp  of  spiritual  truth  : 
they  hold  no  great  spiritual  verities  ;  and  as  a  consequence 
there  are  no  surges  of  spiritual  life  agitating  their  breasts, 
no  system  or  principle  in  ordering  their  conduct  with 
reference  to  the  divine  authority,  no  regularity  in  Chris- 
tian worship  ;  a  great  deal  of  capacity  to  sneer  at  the  in- 
felicities of  the  old-fashioned  worship  of  the  Puritans,  but 
no  capacity  to  understand  or  appreciate  the  simplest  obli- 
gations of  a  creature  to  its  Maker. 

Of  this  sort  of  culture  we  have  a  right  to  be  tired. 
There  is  no  inspiration  in  it.  It  is  a  relief  to  tiirn  from  it 
to  men  of  another  class,  to  men  who  have  some  *'pulp  and 
brawn  "  in  their  moral  nature,  to  men  of  symmetrical  de- 
velopment ;  and  there  are  multitudes  of  them  all  over  the 
Uand  to-day,  who  are  recognizing  their  obligation  to  God, 
:and  rejoicing  in  the  institution  of  the  sabbath.  They  are 
happy  that  it  calls  them,  as  often  as  it  returns,  into  rela- 
tions of  confidence  and  sympathy  with  their  Saviour  and 
their  King.  To  them  the  sabbath  is  dear.  When  it  comes 
to  them,  they  cry,  — 

"  Sweet  day,  thine  hours  too  soon  will  cease ; 
But,  while  they  gently  roll, 
Breathe,  heavenly  Spirit,  source  of  peace, 
A  sabbath  to  my  soul." 

And  that  example  is  contagious  and  inspiring  :  it  will  pre- 
•vail.  **The  Lord's  day  therefore  is  not  gone,  is  not 
:  going." 


THE  SABBATH  NOT  GONE.  1%J 

I  argue  this,  again,  from  the  providential  dealings  of 
God.     They  are  on  the  side  of  the  sabbath. 

When  crime  increases  with  frightful  rapidity ;  when  a 
race  of  tramps  is  hard  to  handle  ;  when  communism  will 
not  down,  with  all  our  incantations  of  popular  suffrage 
and  free  schools  and  a  free  press,  —  men  say,  ''What  shall 
we  do  ?  where  shall  we  look  for  some  power  to  lay  this 
dreadful  spirit  we  have  conjured  up,  but  cannot  manage, 
that  grinds  us  with  taxes,  and  threatens  all  we  hold 
dear?" 

Good  friends,  you  need  a  little  moral  principle  in  the 
community ;  and  you  are  finding  out  you  cannot  have  it, 
when  you  blot  out  religious  sanctions,  by  robbing  the 
world  of  its  sabbath,  and  by  nailing  up  the  doors  of  the 
sanctuary  of  God.  God  is  writing  these  lessons  in  letters 
of  fire  and  blood ;  and  they  are  easy  to  read,  and  plain  to 
understand. 

Even  our  liberal  friends,  so  called,  are  taking  alarm. 
•  A  few  sabbaths  ago.  Rev.  Robert  Collyer,  in  assuming 
the  charge  of  the  Church  of  the  Messiah  in  New  York, 
took  for  his  opening  sermon  the  text,  "  I  was  glad  when 
they  said  unto  me,  *  Let  us  go  into  the  house  of  the 
Lord.'  "  That  was  the  very  word  too,  he  announced,  that 
he  left  as  his  parting  charge  with  the  Church  of  the  Unity 
in  Chicago. 

"A  wise  and  gracious  friend"  there,  he  said,  remarked 
to  him  after  church,  *' '  I  wish  you  had  preached  that  ser- 
mon twenty  years  ago,  instead  of  the  one  I  remember  you 
did  preach,  in  which  you  told  us  we  might  worship  God 
better  perhaps  in  the  woods  or  meadows,  or  in  our  own 
homes,  sometimes,  than  in  the  sanctuary.'  "  "  I  remember 
saying  to  myself,"  said  this  gracious  friend  of  the 
preacher,  *'We  do  not  need  such  exhortation.  We  are 
ready  enough  to  stay  at  home,  or  wander  about  the  world. 
Our  minister  has  no  idea  how  glad  we  are  to  hear  such 


388  ADDRESSES. 


doctrine."  The  minister  himself  confesses,  "I  had  no  idea 
how  easy  it  was  for  the  men  and  women  of  our  free 
thought  and  free  ways  to  drift  from  the  service  of  the 
sanctuary."  He  quotes  those  who  say,  "There  is  no  need 
for  me  to  go  into  the  house  of  the  Lord.  I  have  out- 
grown all  that,  and  am  now  my  own  temple  and  my  own 
priest."  He  asks,  "What  do  you  really  do  in  the  woods, 
and  on  the  waters,  and  in  your  own  homes,  and  what  does 
it  all  come  to?"  "The  drift"  of  it  all,  he  says,  is  "to  slay 
faith,  and  to  touch  with  paralysis  the  nerve  of  any  grand 
endeavor."  "Few  and  far  between,"  he  thinks,  are  those 
who  can  withstand  its  baleful  power;  "while,  with  multi- 
tudes whom  no  man  can  number,  this  own  temple  and 
own  priest  business  is  merely  seeming,  and  the  dumb 
things  that  run  and  fly  worship  God  more  truly  than  they 
do."  He  adds,  "There  is  one  God  of  such  things,  and  his 
name  is  the  one  they  got  from  their  godfathers  and  god- 
mothers ;  one  supreme  service,  and  you  spell  it  with  four 
letters,  s-e-l-f ;  one  grand  purpose  here,  and  that  is  to  look 
after  the  first  person  singular ;  and  one  thing  to  which 
they  look  forward  when  they  get  to  the  end,  and  that  is  a 
leap  in  the  dark." 

Mr.  Collyer  quotes  the  remark  of  Rev.  Dr.  Bellows, 
which  has  been  going  the  rounds  of  the  papers,  "  I  never 
knew  one  man,  or  woman,  who  steadily  neglected  the 
house  of  prayer,  and  the  worship  of  God  on  the  Lord's 
Day,  who  habitually  neglected  it,  and  had  a  theory  by 
which  it  was  neglected,  who  did  not  come  to  grief,  and 
bring  others  to  grief." 

Herbert  Spencer,  after  doing  his  best  to  destroy  reli- 
gious faith,  seems  alarmed  lest  he  leave  the  world  without 
any  authority  in  morals,  and  comes  hurriedly  up,  there- 
fore, just  now,  with  a  new  book  on  ethics,  anticipating  its 
order  in  the  series  of  his  volumes,  he  says,  because  of  the 
urgent  need.     The  need  is  urgent,  in  so  far  as  his  per- 


THE  SABBATH  NOT  GONE.  389 

nicious  influence  has  prevailed  ;  but  his  new  book  is  a 
mere  straw  to  restrain  the  flood  of  immorality  which  his 
denial  of  the  authority  of  a  personal  God  has  let  loose  to 
ravage  the  earth. 

Professor  Goldwin  Smith  says,  in  "The  Atlantic  Month- 
ly," **  If  religious  faith  has  gone,"  —  as  he  strangely  thinks 
it  has,  because  in  certain  narrow  circles  abroad  it  has  dis- 
appeared, —  **  then  morality  has  gone  too ;  for,  in  the  past, 
without  religious  sanctions  men  have  never  been  able  to 
live  under  a  government  of  law."  You  may  add  to  that, 
that  without  the  religious  sanctions  of  the  Bible,  without 
God's  positive  institutions  of  the  sabbath  and  the  sanc- 
tuary, men  have  never  been  able  to  live  under  a  free  gov- 
ernment. 

Our  people  go  travelling  in  Europe,  and  come  back  in 
love  with  foreign  customs,  and  want  to  bring  them  in  on 
us  here.  They  say,  "  People  get  along  very  well  over 
there  without  the  sabbath."  But  they  do  not  have  uni- 
versal suffrage  over  there.  The  free  institutions  we  live 
under  are  born  of  the  New  Testament,  and  they  depend 
on  the  power  of  that  book  to  make  them  a  success.  Just 
as  soon,  and  in  so  far,  as  you  lessen  the  power  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  the  land  by  taking  away  the  sabbath 
and  the  sanctuary,  and  those  functions  of  the  ministry 
and  the  church  which  are  indispensable  to  the  prevalence 
of  the  Christian  religion,  you  lessen  every  moral,  restraint, 
—  you  imperil  every  thing  in  society  that  you  and  I  value, 
and  without  which  we  would  not  consent  to  live  in  the 
land  at  all. 

The  old  argument,  that  Robert  Hall  states  in  his  ser- 
mon on  modern  infidelity,  never  has  been  answered.  "  In 
vain,"  he  says,  **  may  the  infidel  expatiate  to  a  vicious 
person  on  the  advantages  of  a  virtuous  life.  He  will 
reply,  '  My  tastes  are  of  a  different  sort.  There  are  other 
gratifications  I  value  more.  Every  man  must  choose  his 
own  pleasures ; '  and  the  argument  is  at  an  end." 


390  ADDRESSES. 


Washington,  you  remember,  says,  "  Reason  and  expe- 
rience both  forbid  us  to  expect  that  national  morality  can 
prevail  in  exclusion  of  religious  principles.  In  vain  would 
that  man  claim  the  tribute  of  patriotism,  who  should  labor 
to  subvert  these  great  pillars  of  human  happiness,  these 
firmest  props  of  the  duties  of  *  men  and  citizens."  That 
man  does  labor  to  subvert  these  essential  supports  of 
society,  who  attacks  or  neglects  the  holy  day  of  God. 

Once  more  :  The  Lord's  Day  is  not  gone,  and  is  not 
going,  for  all  power  is  given  tmto  Christ. 

I  have  not  been  so  encouraged  and  uplifted  in  a  long 
while,  in  regard  to  the  anxieties  which  oppress  the  Chris- 
tian heart,  as  in  perusing  the  sermon  of  President  Ma- 
goun,  before  the  American  Board  at  Syracuse,  the  other 
day,  on  the  words  of  our  Lord,  ''  All  power  is  given  unto 
me." 

Oh,  friends  !  could  God  give  us  a  glimpse  of  that  day 
when  the  power  of  the  Lord  Jesus  shall  prevail,  when  men 
of  standing  and  of  power,  whose  pernicious  examples  have 
been  quoted  in  the  past,  shall  come  out  as  his  loyal  repre- 
sentatives, honoring  his  name,  we  should  rejoice  in  antici- 
pation of  the  happy  hour. 

When  Gen.  Grant  was  in  France  two  years  ago.  Mar- 
shal McMahon  invited  him  to  attend  the  public  races  on 
a  sabbath  afternoon,  and  the  American  ex-President  de- 
clined—  thanks  be  to  God  ! 

The  American  idea  of  the  sabbath  is  a  priceless  inherit- 
ance. Why  should  we  pluck  from  our  brow  the  fair  dia- 
dem which  God  has  given  to  us  as  a  Christian  nation,  and 
cast  it  under  our  feet,  in  order  that  we  may  put  on  the 
badge  of  shame  which  the  effete  nationalities  of  the  old 
world  wear  .'^ 

God  in  his  mercy  has  honored  this  nation  in  its  past 
observance  of  the  sabbath  ;  and  his  power  is  still  displayed 
here  in  developing  men  of  influence  and  of  public  worth, 
who  honor  and  reverence  his  holy  day. 


THE  SABBATH  NOT  GONE.  39 1 

And  yet,  all  the  while,  many  of  God's  own  children  are 
made  to  tremble  for  the  future  of  the  sabbath,  because  so 
many  men  of  public  station  and  influence  disregard  it. 

Here  was  Mr.  Sumner.  We  have  had  our  great  men, 
—  men  who  have  done  noble  service,  whose  names  will 
always  live  in  grateful  recollection.  But,  because  a  man 
has  rendered  eminent  public  service  in  certain  ways,  is 
every  thing  he  does  a  public  service  t  If  he  has  his  pub- 
lic diplomatic  dinners  regularly  on  the  sabbath  day,  are  we 
therefore  to  think  the  holy  day  of  God  can  be  trampled 
under  foot  by  any  man  at  will }  Who  is  Charles  Sumner, 
and  what  is  his  example  worth,  as  a  guide  to  men  who 
can  read  God's  word,  and  can  see  the  course  of  his  provi- 
dence, and,  above  all,  can  hear  the  approaching  footsteps 
of  the  King  of  kings,  coming  to  reign  over  all  the  earth } 
Under  the  advancing  power  of  Christ  are  coming,  in  place 
of  some  of  our  great  men  to  whom  we  too  readily  bow, 
men  of  more  eloquence,  of  more  culture,  of  more  breadth  of 
view,  greater  statesmen,  greater  men  in  literature,  men  of 
larger  grasp  in  all  the  high  ranges  of  thought,  and  greater 
because  of  their  loyalty  to  Christ,  because  of  the  uplifting 
force  of  his  grace  on  all  their  powers  ;  and  these  men  will 
hallow  his  holy  day.  I  seem  to  hear  the  tread  of  those 
advancing  hosts  of  the  mighty  men  of  God.  I  see  them 
springing  into  life  all  along  the  future,  near  and  far ;  rising 
up  to  bless  the  world,  and  to  pay  homage  to  Christ,  "  King 
of  kings,  and  Lord  of  lords."  Thanks  be  to  him  that 
his  promise  has  gone  forth,  that  *'the  greatness  of  the 
kingdom  under  the  whole  heaven  shall  be  given  unto  the 
people  of  the  saints  of  the  Most  High,  and  all  dominions 
shall  serve  and  obey  him  !  " 

A  friend,  in  prayer-meeting  the  other  evening,  said, 
that,  at  the  Profile  House  at  the  White  Mountains  this 
summer,  they  had  their  sabbath-evening  worship  in  the 
parlors  ;  and  once  a  group,  standing  around  the  office,  were 


392  ADDRESSES. 


noticing  the  people  pass  in  to  worship  God,  when  one  of 
the  group  sneeringly  said,  "That  will  do  for  those  who 
don't  know  any  better."  —  '*  I  don't  know  any  better," 
said  a  fine-looking  man,  walking  in.  Who  does  know  any 
better  }  Is  it  a  mark  of  broad  culture,  of  wise  comprehen- 
sion, for  a  man  to  think  he  knows  better  than  to  rever- 
ence God,  and  keep  his  holy  day  }  In  the  great  future 
that  is  coming,  the  strong,  stalwart  men  will  look  back, 
and  despise  not  only  those  men  of  eminence  in  our  day 
who  failed  to  honor  the  sabbath,  but  will  despise  still  more 
the  weak  people  of  God,  who  were  carried  away  by  their 
bad  example,  who  thought  all  power  of  guidance  was 
given  to  the  little  great  men,  or  the  one-sided  great  men, 
of  their  times,  and  forgot  the  boundless  power  of  Him 
whose  name  is  above  every  name. 

At  his  call,  one  day,  "  sweet  sabbath  morn  "  shall  come 
to  all  the  earth.  It  shall  find  the  populations  of  the  globe 
assembled  in  their  sanctuaries,  worshipping  in  the  name 
of  Christ ;  and  from  **  high  tower  and  lowly  dwelling  "  one 
universal  hymn  of  praise  and  thanksgiving  shall  go  up,  in 
acknowledgment  of  his  power  to  save. 


"THE   CUNARD   LINE'S   SABBATH   POLICY." 

BY    REV.    LEWIS   B.    BATES,    OF    EAST    BOSTON. 

It  is  my  good  fortune  to  live  in  the  Island  Ward,  where 
steamers  come  from  over  the  sea,  and  where  they  take 
their  departure,  and,  during  the  two  or  three  years  past, 
freighted  as  never  before ;  and  I  am  happy  to  say,  sir,  that 
the  Cunard  line  is  managed,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  accord- 
ing  to  our  faith  in  the  sabbath.     It  is  owned  in  England 


THE   CUNARDER'S  SABBATH  POLICY.  393 

chiefly,  and  managed  chiefly  by  Englishmen.  They  arrive 
on  Saturday  sometimes  with  an  expensive  cargo,  but  sab- 
bath morning  all  is  quiet  on  board  of  their  steamers,  in 
their  docks,  and  in  their  warehouses.  Such  is  their  man- 
agement universally.  If  they  arrive  sabbath  morning,  the 
passengers  go  on  shore  ;  but  all  work  is  suspended  on  the 
sabbath.  The  other  lines,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  have  not 
pursued  this  course  ;  and  yet  it  is  strange,  in  their  judg- 
ment, that  they  have  made  no  quicker  passages,  they  have 
been  no  more  successful  in  carrying  freight  or  passengers, 
than  this  line  that  has  respected  the  sabbath  day. 

At  certain  seasons  of  the  year,  in  the  Island  Ward,  you 
might  have  witnessed  strange  scenes.  A  certain  railroad, 
owned  in  part  by  the  State,  has  done  as  much  perhaps  to 
break  the  sabbath  as  the  steamers,  if  not  more.  Long 
freight-trains  have  been  thundering  by,  the  bell  and  the 
whistle  sounding  incessantly ;  and  the  people  along  the 
track  never  would  know  it  was  the  sabbath  from  their  sur- 
roundings. But,  after  the  call  for  this  Convention  was 
issued  last  spring,  these  large  steamers,  some  of  them, 
would  arrive  Saturday  afternoon,  and  commence  to  un- 
load. Sunday  morning  all  hands  would  be  there  ready  to 
discharge,  and  a  fine-looking  man  in  blue  would  walk  on 
board,  and  hand  a  document  to  the  officer  in  command ; 
and  he  would  read  it,  and  say,  "All  business  must  be  sus- 
pended ; "  and  it  was  suspended.  It  is  very  convenient  for 
a  certain  railroad  in  this  city  to  land  within  a  mile  or  less 
of  the  wharf  a  thousand  cattle  Saturday  night,  and  then  — 
as  a  matter  of  mercy  —  load  them  Sunday,  and  send  them 
away  Sunday  night.  And  a  certain  gentleman  who  has 
considerable  to  do  in  the  freight  department,  and  especial- 
ly in  the  management  of  cattle,  said  that  there  was  one 
ship  that  the  officer  in  blue  could  not  stop.  A  few  weeks 
ago  this  ship  arrived,  —  the  largest  ship  afloat  that  carries 
cargoes,  the  largest  ship  aside  from  '*  The  Great  Eastern  " 


394  ADDRESSES. 

that  does  float,  —  and  on  sabbath  morning  all  preparations 
were  being  made  for  her  discharge.  Two  gentlemen  in 
blue  walked  on  board, — one,  I  suppose,  to  keep  up  the 
courage  of  the  other, — and  passed  a  paper  to  the  officer. 
There  were  about  a  hundred  men  all  ready,  with  coats  off 
and  sleeves  rolled  up,  to  commence  to  discharge.  But 
the  officer  in  command  said,  *' You  must  suspend  :  this  is 
sabbath  in  America,  as  sure  as  you  are  alive ; "  and  the 
work  was  suspended,  and  the  great  ship  lay  there  all  day 
quietly,  and  the  hard-working  men  went  home,  and  some 
of  them  went  to  church,  for  I  saw  them  in  the  evening ; 
and  at  the  close  of  the  meeting  they  said,  ''Who  did  this  .? " 
Well,  I  could  not  tell  them,  for  I  didn't  know.  I  don't  know 
now ;  I  don't  know  whether  it  was  the  mayor  of  the  city, 
or  the  chief  of  police,  or  the  governor  of  the  Common- 
wealth :  all  I  know  is,  it  was  done  —  thank  God  !  I  think 
the  impulse  that  caused  it  was  the  call  for  this  Conven- 
tion. The  good  people  in  office  began  to  think  there  was 
really  something  going  to  be  done. 

I  hope,  sir,  that  this  good  work  will  continue,  and  I 
think,  from -the  spirit  of  this  Convention,  that  it  will.  I 
believe  to-day,  sir,  that  Christian  ministers  and  Christian 
members  of  the  church  hold  this  matter  in  their  hands  in 
this  old  ComrQonwealth  of  Massachusetts.  We  may  have 
quiet  and  peace  in  this  old  State  to-day  if  we  will.  I 
think,  such  is  our  moral  power,  that  these  excursions 
which  have  been  referred  to  may  all  be  quieted.  Such  is 
our  moral  power,  a  power  that  shall  go  out  from  the  minis- 
try and  the  church  and  the  better  class  of  citizens  of  this 
Commonwealth,  that  we  may  say  to  this  steamboat-propri- 
etor and  to  these  railroad-stockholders,  **  You  are  chartered 
to  run  six  days  in  the  week,  and  not  on  the  seventh  ; "  and 
they  shall  feel  this,  and  feeling  it  they  shall  yield  to  the 
claims  of  God. 

God  bless  this  Convention ! 


WHAT  IS  SABBATH-KEEPING  f  395 


WHAT   IS   SABBATH-KEEPING? 

BY   REV.    WILLIAM    BARROWS,    D.D.,    OF   READING. 

Rules  for  Sabbath-keeping  are  formed  from  one's  theory- 
concerning  the  Sabbath.     There  are  four  theories  :  — 

I.  The  Natural  Sabbath,  whose  basis  is  in  the  physical 
and  mental  constitution,  which  needs  rest  and  recupera- 
tion. No  moral  element  is  implied  in  it,  and  no  uni- 
formity of  laws  or  of  observance  is  possible. 

II.  The  Judaic  Sabbath,  the  theory  of  which  makes  it 
begin  and  end  with  Judaism. 

III.  The  Ecclesiastical  Sabbath;  which  is,  that  Chris- 
tianity did  not  inherit  the  Sabbath  from  Old-Testament 
ministrations,  nor  did  Christ  or  his  apostles  intend  to 
establish  or  transmit  such  an  institution ;  but  among  the 
early  Church  fathers  sprung  up  a  kind  of  Sabbath,  out 
of  the  necessities  of  the  case  and  times.  The  first  day  of 
the  week  became,  on  the  example  of  the  Apostles,  a 
festal  sacred  day,  commemorative  of  the  resurrection, 
and  finally  a  day  for  Christian  worship  and  teaching. 

IV.  The  Ncw-Engla7id  Sabbath.  Men  educated  under 
it,  and  seeing  its  fruits,  wherever  New-England  influences 
have  gone,  have  assumed  its  basis  variously,  and  defended 
it  more  or  less  logically,  always  earnestly. 

They  find  it  instituted  in  creation,  put  in  statute  for, 
mankind  at  Sinai,  and  inherited  and  imposed,  as  the  other 
nine  commandments,  by  Christianity.  They  assign  to  it  a 
physical,  mental,  and  moral  basis,  demanded  by  our  laws 
of  being,  with  physical,  mental,  and  moral  health  in  view. 
Rewards  and  penalties  are  attached  to  its  observance,  and 
these  are  involuntary  and  inevitable.     But  it  is  held  to  be 


39^  ADDRESSES. 


permanently  a  moral  institution,  having  place  among  the 
ordinary  moralities.  A  glow  and  ardor  for  its  perpetuity 
and  defence  come  up  grandly  out  of  its  history ;  and  the 
dissecting-knife  of  logic,  cleaving  joints  and  muscles 
asunder  to  discover  the  sources  of  its  life  and  force,  may 
not  add  to  its  power  over  the  community.  It  is  an  insti- 
tution wrapped  up  in  its  spirit  rather  than  in  its  letter. 

The  Protestant  Church  is  divided  over  these  four  theo- 
ries ;  and  devoutest  men,  bishops,  ecclesiastical  antiquaries, 
scholars,  and  every-day  Christians,  are  advocates  of  each. 
Yet  all  unite  in  saying,  *'  Remember  the  Sabbath  day." 
To  perpetuate  the  day  and  its  glorious  fruits,  our  wisdom 
and  strength  lie  in  the  union  of  sentiment,  without  insist- 
ing on  a  union  of  reasons. 

As  to  definitions,  rules,  and  regulations  on  Sabbath- 
keeping,  only  general  statements  can  be  made  with  har- 
mony, in  the  present  status  of  the  subject. 

1.  A  schedule  for  SabbatJi-keeping  can  be  neither  very 
ijtclusive  7ior  very  exclusive.  Principles  and  spirit  must  be 
expected  to  rule,  rather  than  laws. 

2.  Physical  rest  sJioiild  be  pj'ovided  for  by  a  cessatioit  of 
ordinary  biLsiness.  Yet  our  argument  for  the  Sabbath 
must  not  lean  very  hard  on  this  point.  Doubtless,  as  a 
whole,  a  grand  pause  should  be  made  in  worldly  activities, 
as  there  was  of  creative  activities  when  "  God  rested  from 
all  his  work." 

3.  Intellectual  labor ^  as  a  busijiess,  sJiould  be  siLSp ended. 
Nature  calls  for  this.  Mentally,  as  well  as  physically, 
the  working-man  is  a  seven-day  clock,  and  needs  the 
winding-up. 

4.  The  ulterior  aim  and  end  of  Sabbath-keeping  must  be 
regarded  as  moral  and  spiritual.  So  far  as  God  makes 
its  end  manifest,  at  creation,  or  Sinai,  or  in  the  out- 
growths of  the  Christian  dispensation,  this  is  it  :  the 
spiritual   part  of   man,  the   immortal  side,  demands  this 


THE  SABBATH  AND    THE   CHHDREN.  Z97 

day.  For  reflection  and  instruction  on  the  better  part  of 
one's  being,  for  attention  to  the  higher  and  nobler  social 
relations  •  of  life,  and  for  intimations  and  for  preparations 
concerning  the  momentous  hereafter,  the  Sabbath  is  made 
for  man.  There  are  other  obligations  and  rights  and 
issues  connected  with  the  day,  but  the  spiritual  is  prior, 
fundamental,  and  supreme. 


THE   SABBATH  AND   THE   CHILDREN. 

BY    REV.   ASA   BULLARD,    OF   CAMBRIDGE. 

The  words  of  our  Saviour  are,  **  The  sabbath  was  made 
for  man."  That,  of  course,  includes  the  children.  There 
is  no  system  of  religion,  but  that  of  the  Bible,  that  makes 
the  good  of  the  young  a  specific  and  prominent  object. 

I  think  the  sabbath  can  be  made,  and  should  be  made, 
the  "day  of  all  the  week  the  best."  It  should  be  a  day 
ever  welcome  to  the  children.  There  should  be  no  such 
unpleasant  restrictions  and  restraints,  no  such  exacting 
requirements,  as  will  make  the  thought  of  an  eternal 
sabbath  in  heaven  unwelcome  to  the  child.  That  was  a 
sad  state  of  things  that  made  a  little  boy  dread  the 
thought  of  going  to  heaven,  where  his  grandfather  had 
gone,  because  "  Grandfather  will  always  be  saying  *  Tut, 
tut ! '  to  me,  whatever  I  do  ;  "  and  that  was  a  sad  state  of 
things  when  a  little  girl  said  she  did  not  want  to  honor 
her  father  and  mother,  because  the  Bible  said  her  days 
would  be  lofig ;  and  her  sabbaths  now,  with  all  the  re- 
quirements made  of  her,  and  the  restrictions  imposed  upon 
her,  were  so  long  that  it  almost  wearied  the  poor  child's 
life  out  of  her.     I  have  no  doubt  that  in  Puritan  times,  and 


398  ADDRESSES. 

perhaps  at  the  present  day,  there  are  many  families  in 
which  there  are  restrictions  and  requirements  very  unwise, 
and  very  unhappy  in  their  influence  upon  the  minds  of  the 
young.  Yet,  I  repeat  it,  I  believe  the  sabbath  may  be 
made  a  welcome  day,  — a  day  that  the  children  will  delight 
to  have  return ;  such  a  day  that  they  will  be  prepared  to 
enter  into  its  services,  and  find  it  one  of  the  most  delight- 
ful of  the  week. 

What  children  need,  in  order  to  make  them  contented 
and  happy,  is  employment.  Every  one  knows  that  a 
hammer  and  a  nail,  a  knife  and  a  few  pieces  of  wood,  will 
make  a  boy  contented,  day  in  and  day  out,  rain  or  shine ; 
and  that  a  needle  and  thread,  and  a  few  pieces  of  cloth 
to  make  patchwork  and  to  dress  her  dolls,  will  make  a 
little  girl  contented  and  happy,  day  in  and  day  out. 

But  would  you  give  such  things  to  children  on  the  sab- 
bath .?  Well,  no,  not  exactly ;  but  I  would  put  into  their 
hands  those  things  that  would  occupy  their  attention,  that 
would  gratify  them,  and  that  would  be  associated  with  the 
sabbath  as  a  holy  day.  I  may  say  in  regard  to  my  own 
practice,  a  large  number  of  Scripture  illustrated  cards  were 
purchased,  and  a  large  number  of  blocks  with  religious  en- 
gravings were  put  into  their  hands,  only  to  be  used  on  the 
sabbath  day,  never  to  be  seen  except  on  that  day.  The 
consequence  was,  the  sabbath  always  came  to  them  as  a 
day  of  delight,  giving  them  employment  and  much  instruc- 
tion. There  is  no  end,  at  the  present  day,  of  those  beau- 
tiful cards,  dissected  maps,  and  all  kinds  of  similar  things 
to  interest  the  young.  Games  —  Scripture  games  —  too. 
*' Games,"  you  say,  **for  the  sabbath  day!"  Well,  that 
is  rather  an  unfortunate  word.  However,  these  ''games  " 
lead  the  children  to  study  the  Bible ;  and  for  hours  they 
will  be  interested  in  learning  a  great  deal  of  Scripture  and 
all  those  things  which  relate  to  Scripture  objects,  scenes, 
events,  and  characters.     I  know  that  many  children  have  a 


THE  SABBATH  AND    THE   CHILDREX.  399 

very  shrewd  way  of  doing  a  great  many  things  with  these 
games,  —  if  you  please  to  call  them  so,  —  as  older  people 
do  on  the  sabbath  day.  A  great  many  people  think  it  is 
right  for  them  to  read  all  they  find  in  a  religious  news- 
paper,—  about  politics  and  every  thing,  —  because  it  is  in 
a  religious  paper.  Now,  many  of  these  boys  and  girls  will 
show  their  shrewdness  in  this  way  :  — 

Two  little  boys  were  using  their  Scripture  blocks,  mak- 
ing all  kinds  of  objects,  erecting  their  little  houses  ;  and 
by  and  by  the  elder  one  said  to  the  younger,  "■  You  must 
not  build  houses  on  the  sabbath  day." 

"But  j^//  are  building  a  house." 

"Well,"  said  he,  "I  am  going  to  put  a  steeple  on  mine, 
and  it  is  right  for  me  to  make  a  meeting-house  on  the  sab- 
bath." 

Then  again  they  were  playing  keeping  store,  when  the 
elder  said,  "  It  is  not  proper  to  keep  store  on  the  sabbath 
day." 

*'But  j^;/  are  keeping  store." 

"  Oh,  I  am  keeping  an  apothecary-shop.'* 

I  would  make  one  more  suggestion.  Teach  children 
from  early  childhood  to  attend  public  worship.  We  have 
come  upon  a  time  when  children  have  done  with  their 
habits  of  going  to  church  on  the  sabbath  :  they  attend  the 
sabbath  sghool,  and  then  they  go  home,  and  spend  their 
time  in  the  ways  I  have  mentioned,  or  in  sleeping  or  play- 
ing or  walking.  Now,  I  would  not,  for  the  life  of  me,  lose 
the  association  of  going  to  church  with  our  father  and 
mother,  and  our  large,  old-fashioned  Puritan  family  of  ten 
children.  What  an  inspiration  for  a  minister  to  look  over 
a  congregation,  and  see  households  present,  father  and 
mother  and  four  or  five  children  ! 

They  say  the  children  cannot  understand  the  preach- 
ing :  they  understand  a  great  deal  more  than  we  think 
they  do.     A  little  girl  in  Cambridge  went  to  church  one 


400  ADDRESSES. 


day  when  the  minister  preached  on  the  passage:  **Thou 
hast  left  thy  first  love."  Monday  morning,  father  and 
mother  got  into  some  sort  of  a  dispute  —  I  don't  know 
whether  it  amounted  to  what  is  now  called  an  unpleasant- 
ness, or  not ;  but  it  was  so  much  of  a  dispute,  that,  after 
the  father  had  left  the  house,  the  little  girl  said,  "Moth- 
er, you  must  not  forget  what  the  minister  said  yesterday, 
about  leaving  your  first  love."  A  great  many  children  are 
receiving  instruction  on  the  sabbath  day,  which  they  will 
call  up  in  after-life. 

Now,  if  there  was  no  other  thing  that  I  could  say  here 
or  anywhere  else,  I  would  say  to  all  fathers  and  mothers : 
Take  your  children  with  you  to  the  sanctuary.  There  is 
nobody  and  nothing  in  this  world  that  has  a  right  to  stand 
between  parents  and  children  ;  and  then  after  that  there  is 
nothing  that  has  any  right  to  stand  between  the  minister 
and  the  children,  —  no  sabbath  school  or  any  thing  else.  I 
would  not  hesitate  to  say  to  any  father  or  mother  or  child : 
If  you  cannot  go  but  to  one  service,  go  to  church,  what- 
ever becomes  of  the  sabbath  school. 

But  can  it  be  that  the  children  cannot  go  to  the  sabbath 
school  and  one  service  at  least  on  the  sabbath  day .?  Take 
them  to  the  church,  and  the  minister  will  be  interested  in 
them.  They  say  the  minister  won't  preach  to  them  :  why 
should  he  preach  if  they  are  not  there  "?  Let  him  see  the 
pews  filled  up  with  the  children,  and  I  venture  to  say  that 
either  in  his  prayer,  or  in  something,  he  will  so  direct  the 
service  that  the  children  will  remember  his  instruction. 
We  are  training  up  a  whole  generation  of  non-church- 
goers ;  and  if  these  children  and  youth  are  trained  up 
now  not  to  attend  church,  when  they  get  to  an  older  age 
they  will  not  be  seen  in  the  church.  May  God  help  us 
to  revive  the  old  plan  of  households  going  to  the  house  of 
God  on  the  sabbath  day ! 


SUNDAY  OBSERVANCE  IN  NEW  YORK,        40 1 


SUNDAY  OBSERVANCE   IN   NEW  YORK  AND   IN 
EUROPE. 

BY  REV.  VV.  W.  ATTERBURY,  SECRETARY  OF  THE  NEW  YORK  SABBATH 

COMMITTEE. 

I  HAVE  been  asked  to  say  a  word  in  respect  to  the 
practical  question,  What  has  been  done  in  New  York  City, 
within  the  past  few  years,  towards  the  enforcement  of  the 
Sunday  law  ?  A  little  more  than  twenty  years  ago,  at- 
tention was  called  to  the  increasing  Sunday  desecration, 
and  the  alarming  amount  of  disorder  and  crime  connected 
with  it.  Some  previous  efforts  at  Sunday  reform  had 
been  injudiciously  managed,  and  had  resulted  in  evil 
rather  than  good.  The  government  of  the  city  at  that 
time  was  in  the  hands  of  a  party  who  pandered  to  the 
prejudices  of  the  lowest  class  of  the  people.  Large  num- 
bers of  immigrants  of  the  lower  classes  were  pouring  into 
the  city,  —  the  better  classes  going  to  the  West,  —  whose 
influence  was  to  turn  Sunday  into  a  noisy  holiday.  Nu- 
merous low-class  theatres  were  opened  on  Sunday  night, 
offering  attractions  of  free  admittance  to  females  and  a 
very  low  charge  for  young  men,  with  such  plays  as  you 
might  expect  in  such  places,  and  with  the  selling  of  liquor 
in  the  auditorium.  Military  and  society  funerals,  target 
excursions,  and  other  processions  were  accustomed  to 
parade  the  streets  with  bands  of  music.  Liquor-shops 
plied  their  traffic  without  restraint,  and  the  noisy  cries  of 
newsboys  were  heard  throughout  the  city.  In  this  state 
of  things  it  was  thought  that  something  should  be  done ; 
and  so  a  large , number  of  gentlemen  came  together,  and 


402  ADDRESSES. 


concluded  to  organize  an  association  for  the  purpose  of 
suppressing  this  evil,  if  possible.  They  selected  about 
twenty  gentlemen,  —  laymen,  men  well  known  in  the  com- 
munity, representing  the  different  walks  of  business  life  as 
well  as  different  religious  interests, — to  act  as  the  hand 
and  the  voice  of  the  Christian  constituency  who  agreed  to 
stand  behind  them,  to  supply  the  means,  and  to  sustain 
them  in  every  way  in  which  they  needed  to  be  sustained. 
This  committee  went  to  work,  in  the  first  place,  to 
investigate  the  facts  in  the  case,  and  then  deliberately 
took  up  one  evil  after  another,  and  sought  to  suppress  the 
evil. 

For  instance,  there  was  the  nuisance  of  newsboys  vocif- 
erously crying  their  papers  from  one  end  of  the  city  to  the 
other,  right  in  front  of  our  churches  and  homes.  Nobody 
seemed  to  think  the  evil  could  be  suppressed.  The  com- 
mittee went  to  work,  and  through  the  papers  called  atten- 
tion to  the  matter ;  and  by  and  by  people  began  to  feel 
that  this  was  an  evil  that  should  be  stopped,  —  that  there 
was  no  reason  why  the  quiet  of  Sunday  should  be  dis- 
turbed by  this  noisy  outcry.  Nothing  was  said  against 
the  selling  of  the  papers,  but  it  was  against  the  noisy 
selling  of  them.  After  a  little  while,  public  sentiment 
■having  been  properly  aroused,  the  police  went  to  work, 
and  put  the  thing  down,  and  it  has  staid  down  ever  since. 
Sometimes  it  springs  up  for  a  little  time;  but,  on  proper 
complaint  to  the  police,  the  evil  is  easily  suppressed,  and 
we  are  substantially  free  from  this  annoyance. 

Then  they  went  to  work  at  the  Sunday  theatres.  It 
was  found  that  the  old  Sunday  law  would  not  meet  the 
evil,  so  a  special  law  was  prepared  and  enacted  at  Albany. 
This  law  was  enforced :  certain  parties  litigated  it,  and  the 
question  was  carried  up  to  a  higher  court,  where  the  law 
was  sustained,  and  it  has  been  enforced  ever  since.  We  do 
not  have  any  theatres  open  in  New  York  on  Sunday  even- 


SUNDAY  OBSERVANCE  IN  NEW   YORK.    '    403 

ing,  and  have  not  had  for  fifteen  or  sixteen  years,  except 
as  occasionally  the  law  is  broken,  when  the  proper  punish- 
ment is  inflicted.  This  theatre-law  does  not  forbid  con- 
certs ;  it  was  found  impracticable  to  get  the  law  through 
with  that  word  in  it :  so  the  word  was  left  out,  and  in 
many  of  our  theatrical  buildings  there  are  concerts  in  the 
evening;  but  they  are  not  in  costume  and  accompanied 
with  all  the  stage  arrangements  :  they  are  simply  concerts, 
and  are  not  allowed  to  step  beyond  that.  Theatrical  and 
similar  performances  are  prohibited. 

Then  attention  was  turned  to  the  enforcement  of  the 
liquor-law  on  Sunday.  This  has  always  been  found  the 
most  difficult  thing  to  deal  with  in  our  great  city.  We 
have  always  had  law  on  the  subject,  but  it  has  been  diffi- 
cult to  enforce  the  law.  However,  during  three  years, 
from  1867  to  1870,  it  is  an  important  historical  fact  which 
no  subsequent  failures  can  obliterate,  we  had  a  liquor-law 
that  was  enforced  in  New  York.  Before  that  time  a  law 
prohibited  the  selling  of  liquor  with  pains  and  penalties; 
but  it  was  not  enforced,  and  the  licenses  from  liquor- 
shops  in  the  city  of  New  York  for  years  before  had 
averaged  only  some  twelve  to  fifteen  thousand  dollars  a 
year.  In  1866  a  law  was  passed,  called  the  Metropolitan 
Excise  Law,  that  was  enforced  for  three  years,  and  it  was 
made  the  interest  of  the  better  class  of  liquor-dealers  to 
see  that  every  man  paid  his  license,  and  that  the  law  was 
enforced.  The  result  of  it  was  that  for  three  years  we 
had  revenue  from  licenses  in  the  city  of  New  York  of  one 
million  dollars  a  year.  The  arrests  for  disorder  and 
drunkenness,  which  had  always  been  twenty-five  per  cent 
more  on  Sunday  than  on  Tuesday, — as  an  average  week- 
day, —  at  once  decreased,  and  became  forty  per  cent  less 
on  Sunday  than  on  Tuesday.  That  law  continued  in 
force  until  the  regime  of  Mr.  Tweed,  when  it  was  repealed 
and  the  city  put  under  the  State  law ;  and,  although  we 


404  ADDRESSES. 


have  had  a  semblance  of  the  enforcement  of  the  law  ever 
since,  it  is  only  partially  enforced.  But  the  outward, 
glaring  display  of  the  traffic  is  restricted ;  and,  if  there  is 
any  disturbance  or  nuisance  in  any  particular  instance 
of  the  traffic,  it  can  be  suppressed  even  under  the  present 
imperfect  administration  of  the  law. 

Then  we  had  another  evil  to  contend  with,  —  the  Sunday 
processions.  It  was  a  violation  of  the  laws  of  good  neigh- 
borhood for  bands  of  music  to  pass  right  up  and  down 
before  our  churches  and  homes,  creating  a  disturbance. 
It  was  not  simply  that  they  played  for  funerals,  but  on 
their  return  they  would  play  lively  airs,  and  were  followed 
by  a  noisy  rabble  of  idle  men  and  boys.  The  police  were 
powerless  to  resist  the  evil.  But  by  and  by  there  came 
that  trouble  in  New  York,  when  there  was  a  fight  over  the 
Orange  parade  on  a  week-day ;  and  this,  with  some  other 
difficulties  of  a  similar  sort,  made  people  feel  that  it  was 
quite  time  to  put  restraint  on  processions  in  our  streets. 
The  Sabbath  Committee  had  been  waiting  for  this  oppor- 
tunity, and  they  said,  Now  is  our  time.  They  secured 
the  enactment  of  a  law  which  put  processions  on  week- 
days under  the  control  of  the  police,  and  which  prohibited 
all  processions  with  music  on  Sunday  in  New  York, 
except  in  the  case  of  bond-fide  military  funerals  while 
escorting  the  body.  That  law  has  been  enforced  impar- 
tially ever  since  ;  and  all  classes,  except  a  few  who  always 
want  to  have  their  own  way  and  hate  all  Sunday  restraints, 
agree  as  to  the  excellence  of  the  law. 

Various  other  sources  of  Sunday  disturbance  have  en- 
gaged from  time  to  time  the  attention  of  the  committee. 
Often  these  have  been  abated  by  private  remonstrance, 
without  appeal  to  the  officers  of  the  law.  Meanwhile 
vigilant  attention  has  been  paid  to  the  course  of  legisla- 
tion at  Albany,  so  that  any  unfavorable  measures  may  be 
met  with  timely  resistance. 


SUNDAY  OBSERVANCE  IN  NEW   YORK.        405 

Some  of  the  principles  upon  which  the  committee  have 
always  sought  to  work  may  be  noted.  One  of  these  prin- 
ciples is  to  make  the  distinction  clear  between  the  civil 
sabbath  and  the  religious  sabbath.  From  the  start  the 
Sabbath  Committee  emphasized  this  point,  —  that  you 
cannot  make  men  religious  by  law,  and  that  you  must 
avoid  seeming  to  enforce  the  religious  observance  of  the 
day  by  the  authority  of  the  secular  law. 

Another  principle  of  the  Sabbath  Committee  has  always 
been  this,  —  to  avoid  entangling  alliances.  Keep  the  Sun- 
day issue  distinct  from  every  other.  Do  not  mix  it  up 
with  the  temperance  question,  or  with  the  question  of 
the  Bible  in  the  public  schools.  Let  the  issue  stand  by 
itself,  so  that  you  may  get  the  very  largest  number  of  per- 
sons to  co-operate  with  you.  Here  is  a  question  where 
men  who  differ  on  other  subjects  may  stand  together.  The 
Protestant  and  the  Roman  Catholic,  the  Lutheran  and  the 
strictest  Puritan,  have  alike  an  interest  in  maintaining 
our  Sunday  law  ;  they  will  all  stand  with  us  in  endeavor- 
ing to  secure  that  to  which  every  good  citizen  has  a  right, 
—  rest  on  the  sabbath  day,  and  enjoyment  of  its  quiet. 

Then,  again,  the  committee  have  aimed  never  to  under- 
take an  issue  until  the  people  were  prepared  for  it,  until 
there  was  good  reason  to  believe  that  the  object  could 
be  reached.  It  has  been  felt  that  it  is  never  wise  to  run 
one's  head  against  a  wall  ;  but,  if  a  thing  be  obviously 
impracticable,  it  is  better  to  let  it  alone  until,  in  the  good 
providence  of  God,  the  way  be  opened  to  accomplish  it. 
The  Sabbath  Committee  have  always  recognized  the  con- 
trolling power  of  public  sentiment  ;  and  they  would  never 
take  a  step  until  they  had  gone  to  work  deliberately,  week 
after  week,  and  sometimes  month  after  month,  before  tak- 
ing the  step,  to  prepare  the  way  by  enlightening  and 
arousing  public  sentiment.  Much  use  has  been  made  of 
the  press.     The  documents  of  the  committee  have  been 


406  ADDRESSES. 


widely  circulated,  and  by  these  as  well  as  by  public 
addresses,  sermons,  &c.,  much  has  been  done  to  mould 
public  opinion. 

Furthermore,  the  committee  have  sought  to  work  as  far 
as  possible  through  the  constituted  authorities,  and  have 
avoided  giving  to  their  own  agency  needless  prominence. 

On  such  principles  as  these,  —  taking  one  step  at  a 
time,  advancing  wisely,  patiently,  discreetly,  and  yet  with 
courage,  —  the  Sabbath  Committee  have  done  a  quiet  but 
most  important  work.  When  .you  remember  that  there 
are,  in  the  city  of  New  York,  five  hundred  thousand 
foreigners,  sixty  thousand  or  more  Jews  who  do  not  keep 
the  first  day  of  the  week,  and  a  transient  population  of 
travellers,  sailors,  &c.,  estimated  at  thirty  thousand,  it  is 
encouraging  that  the  sabbath  is  as  well  observed  as  it  is. 

For  a  few  years  past,  there  has  been  a  growing  interest 
in  the  question  of  Sunday  observance,  on  the  Continent 
of  Europe.  In  Germany  many  of  the  prominent  pastors 
have  felt  the  vital  need  of  a  more  religious  observance  of 
the  day,  and  are  actively  engaged  in  promoting  it ;  and  the 
supreme  church  council  of  Prussia,  and  several  of  the  pro- 
vincial synods,  have  earnestly  taken  up  the  matter.  The 
Reformed  Church  assemblies  of  Bohemia  and  Hungary 
have  recently  called  attention  to  the  same  subject.  In  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  in  France  and  to  some  extent  in 
Belgium  and  elsewhere,  there  exists  a  similar  movement ; 
and  a  religious  association  formed  for  this  purpose  a  few 
years  ago  received  the  special  benediction  of  Pope  Pius 
IX.  The  lately  deceased  bishops  Dupanloup,  of  Orleans, 
and  Bataille,  of  Amiens,  advocated  the  cause  with  great 
earnestness  and  ability. 

Societies  have  been  formed  in  nearly  every  country  of 
Europe  for  promoting  the  secular  and  civil  as  well  as  the 
religious  observance  of  Sunday.    The  Social-Democrats  of 


REWARDS   OF  SABBATH-KEEPING.  407 

Germany,  at  their  Gotha  Conference  in  1877,  affirmed  as 
one  of  their  principles,  the  suspension  of  work  on  Sunday 
to  be  assured  by  the  State.  The  subject  has  been  brought 
up  in  the  German  Imperial  Parliament.  In  Switzerland, 
where  the  lead  has  been  taken  in  these  movements,  some 
important  ameliorations  have  been  made  by  the  govern- 
ment in  the  Sunday  employment  of  officials. 

In  1876  an  International  Confederation  was  formed,  with 
headquarters  at  Geneva,  for  the  purpose  of  combining 
and  encouraging  national  and  local  efforts  in  favor  of  the 
observance  of  Sunday,  which,  while  resting  on  the  basis 
of  the  divine  obligation  of  the  Lord's  Day,  welcomes  the 
co-operation  of  all  who  will  aid  in  promoting  its  prac- 
tical ends.  The  confederation  has  received  assurance  of 
the  approval  and  sympathy  of  the  Emperor  of  Germany, 
the  Duke  of  Baden,  and  many  others  prominent  both  in 
Church  and  State.  It  held  an  important  congress  at  Bern, 
in  September,  1879,  attended  by  upwards  of  three  hundred 
delegates,  representing  nearly  every  nation  on  the  Conti- 
nent, as  well  as  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States. 


REWARDS  OF  SABBATH-KEEPING. 

BY  HON.  WILLIAM  E.  DODGE  OF  NEW  YORK. 

Some  forty  years  ago  I  was  bound  to  New  Orleans  on  a 
hasty  and  important  mercantile  trip.  I  had  been  riding 
three  days,  day  and  night,  in  the  stage.  The  stage  was 
full,  and  on  Saturday,  as  we  approached  evening,  I  said  to 
my  fellow-travellers,  "  What  a  blessed  thing  that  we  have 
the  sabbath  to-morrow!" — "Well,"  said  one,  "wouldn't 
it  be !  but  I  am  so  situated  that  I  must  go  on.     I  wish  I 


408  ADDRESSES. 


could  rest ;  but  I  can't."  I  found  from  the  driver  that  at 
about  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening  we  should  reach  La 
Grange,  Ga.  I  said,  '*  Let  me  out  there."  When  we 
arrived,  I  took  my  valise,  and  went  into  the  hotel.  It  was 
a  very  small    hotel ;    but    I   slept  soundly.     The  sabbath 


morning  was  beautiful.  At  the  breakfast-table  there  were 
none  but  the  landlord  and  three  children.  I  asked  the 
children,  **  Have  you  a  sabbath  school  1 "  —  "  Oh,  yes,  sir  ! 
we  are  hurrying  to  get  through  to  go."  —  ''Will  you  let 
me  go  with  you.'*"  —  **  Yes,  sir;  certainly."  They  led 
the  way,  and  crossed  a  beautiful  little  park  to  an  academy 
in  a  grove,  where  I  found,  to  my  astonishment,  a  large 
sabbath  school.  The  children  went  in,  and  I  sat  down  by 
the  door,  an  entire  stranger.  I  was  superintendent  of  a 
sabbath  school  in  New  York.  The  superintendent,  see- 
ing me,  came  and  said,  "  Stranger,  there  is  a  Bible-class  of 
young  men  from  the  academy  ;  their  teacher  is  sick  to-day. 
Will  you  teach  them  .^ "  There  were  eight  or  ten  fine- 
looking  young  men,  and  I  had  a  pleasant  time  with  them. 
The  superintendent  came  and  said  to  me,  ''  Stranger, 
where  do  you  come  from  "^  "  —  ''I  am  from  New  York."  — 
"  Now  look  here,"  said  he,  **  we  have  just  started  a  sabbath 
school  here,  a  union  school.  We  are  Baptists,  Methodists, 
and  Presbyterians.  We  never  had  a  sabbath  school  here 
until  now.  Now  won't  you  talk  to  the  teachers  and  schol- 
ars "^ "  So,  in  my  plain  way,  I  undertook  to  talk  to  the 
children.  Then  the  school  was  dismissed,  and  we  went 
towards  the  church,  where  I  heard  an  excellent  plain 
sermon.  There  were  three  or  four  churches  on  the  green  ; 
and,  as  I  came  out,  quite  to  my  astonishment  and  pleasure, 
one  of  my  customers — forgotten  that  I  had  a  customer 
in  La  Grange  —  came  up  to  me,  and  said,  ''Why,  Mr. 
Dodge,  where  did  you  come  from  .'' "  and  he  introduced 
me  to  three  or  four  gentlemen,  and  one  gentleman  said, 
"  Now  don't  go  back  to  that  hotel :  come  and  take  dinner 


REWARDS   OF  SABBATH-KEEPING.  409 

with  me."  While  we  were  eating  dinner,  in  came  three 
gentlemen,  among  them  the  principal  of  the  large  acade- 
my,—  a  brother  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Beman  of  Troy,  —  and  they 
said,  "  We  want  you  to  talk  to  the  people  in  the  church 
this  afternoon.  We  will  give  up  the  services  in  the  other 
churches,  and  attend  this."  The  church  was  as  large  as 
this,  and  in  front  were  about  sixty  of  the  young  men  from 
Mr.  Beman's  academy,  and  then  the  children  of  the  school 
filled  up  nearly  the  rest  of  the  centre ;  and  the  galler- 
ies and  sides  were  crowded  full.  I  spoke  to  them  for  half 
an  hour.  In  the  evening,  they  said  they  had  just  started 
a  teachers'  meeting,  and  they  wished  me  to  come  to  the 
teachers'  meeting.  I  went,  and  we  had  a  good  talk  to- 
gether. I  went  home,  and  slept  well,  and  rose  on  a  delight- 
ful morning.  I  had  to  run  the  risk  of  the  stage  being 
full.  Well,  when  I  came  out  to  go,  there  were  some 
twenty  or  thirty  of  the  citizens  of  La  Grange  to  bid  me 
good-by.  I  had  come  a  perfect  stranger,  but  they  were 
waiting  to  see  me  off.  The  stage  came,  and  I  got  my 
seat  ;  and  on  I  went  travelling  that  day  and  night.  Next 
morninsf  we  reached  a  little  railroad  built  out  from  Mont- 
gomery,  Ala.,  where  we  were  to  take  the  steamer  for 
Mobile.  As  I  got  on  the  train  I  was  anxious,  and  said 
to  the  conductor,  "  Is  there  any  boat  down  the  river 
to-day.''"  —  "Two  went  down  yesterday,"  he  said  :  "there 
won't  be  another  until  Thursday." — "Well,"  I  said  to 
myself,  "  it  has  always  turned  out  well  when  I  have  tried 
to  spend  the  sabbath  right."  We  arrived  in  Montgomery. 
As  the  train  stopped,  a  man  sung  out,  "Any  passengers 
for  the  boat }  It  is  just  off."  The  best  of  the  two  boats 
had  waited  to  take  in  a  hundred  bales  of  cotton,  and  they 
concluded  to  await  the  train.  In  ten  minutes  we  were 
going  down  the  river.  The  next  day  we  overtook  the 
other  boat  at  a  wooding-place,  and  there  were  my  friends 
who  had  rode  with  me  in  the  stage,  and  could  not  stop 


410 '  ADDRESSES. 


over  Sunday,  waiting  there  on  board  that  boat  ;  and,  our 
boat  being  the  faster,  we  got  into  Mobile  one  day  ahead. 

A  few  years  after  that,  before  the  days  of  steamships,  I 
was  on  my  way  to  Liverpool  in  one  of  the  largest  ships 
that  ever  sailed  out  of  New  York.  We  had  a  twenty-four 
days'  passage  to  the  mouth  of  the  Channel,  and  there 
we  rested  :  there  was  not  wind  enough  to  carry  us  farther. 
There  came  out  from  old  Kinsale  a  pilot-boat ;  there  was 
just  a  little  breath  of  air  sufficient  to  move  the  little 
boat  with  its  large  sails.  I  was  anxious  to  stop  at  Cork,  to 
see  Father  Mathew ;  and  quite  a  number  of  us  made  an 
arrangement  to  get  on  the  pilot-boat,  and  go  on  to  old 
Kinsale,  and  thence  through  the  country.  Well,  soon 
after  we  left  the  ship,  we  found  there  wasn't  wind  enough 
for  the  boat,  even  ;  and,  just  as  we  got  under  the  head 
of  Kinsale,  the  tide  began  to  run  out  swiftly, — for  it 
rises  there  thirty  feet,  —  and  we  had  to  lie  under  the  head 
of  Kinsale  all  night,  a  terrible  night  too.  Next  day  was 
the  sabbath.  The  sun  rose  beautiful,  and  about  seven  we 
ran  in  with  the  tide  to  the  little  village  of  Kinsale.  We 
were  all  tired  ;  many  of  our  friends  had  been  sick  during 
the  night,  and  it  so  happened  that  each  one  of  them  had  a 
most  pressing  excuse  to  go  on.  Some  of  them  had  never 
travelled  on  the  sabbath  at  all,  but  they  were  so  situated 
that  they  must  go  on  ;  and  particularly  one  lady  who  had 
come  out  in  charge  of  two  girls  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age, 
and  she  was  very  anxious  indeed  to  keep  on  travelling. 
A  gentleman  and  his  wife  from  New  York,  Mrs.  Dodge 
and  myself,  were  all  that  remained.  We  had  nice  rooms  in 
a  little  bit  of  a  hotel,  where  we  changed  our  clothing,  and 
washed  ourselves,  and  got  breakfast.  We  went  to  a  beau- 
tiful little  church,  and  had  a  delightful  service.  After 
service,  the  young  preacher,  seeing  us  there  as  strangers, 
made  us  welcome ;  and  we  attended  service  again  in  the 
afternoon.     On  Monday  morning,  as  the  coach  came  up. 


THE  SABBATH  IN  FOREIGN  MISSIONS.        411 

we  found  this  young  clergyman  was  to  be  our  companion 
to  Cork ;  and  he  said,  '*  Now  get  up  on  top  of  the  stage  : 
I  know  all  the  country,  and  will  show  you  every  thing." 
We  had  a  beautiful  ride  of  two  days  and  two  nights. 
But  the  second  day,  about  ten  o'clock,  we  stopped  at  one 
of  the  principal  stage-villages,  and  there  on  the  platform 
stood  every  one  of  our  poor  passengers  that  had  come 
along  with  us.  There  they  stood;  and  that  poor  woman 
with  her  two  little  children.  They  had  travelled  day  and 
night,  and  they  had  got  tired,  and  waited  for  this  stage  to 
come  along ;  but  there  wasn't  a  seat  in  the  stage,  and  we 
left  them  there  all  forlorn  ! 

"  In  the  keeping  of  His  commandments  there  is  great 
reward." 


THE   SABBATH   IN   FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

BY   REV.  N.  G.  CLARK,  D.D.,  OF    BOSTON,  SECRETARY  OF  THE   AMERICAN 
BOARD    OF   COMMISSIONERS    FOR   FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

We  should  have  very  little  hope  of  success  in  the  mis- 
sionary enterprise,  without  the  Christian  sabbath.  It  is 
needed  for  the  proper  education  of  those  who  are  brought 
out  from  the  darkness  of  ignorance  and  superstition  into 
the  knowledge  of  the  truth.  Errors  of  every  sort  must 
be  cleared  away.  Traditions  ingrained  into  the  very  life 
of  the  people  can  only  be  eradicated  by  the  most  patient 
instruction,  and  new  principles  of  life  introduced.  Hence, 
everywhere,  as  a  missionary  principle,  the  strict  observance 
of  the  sabbath  is  carefully  taught. 

Some  very  striking  examples  of  fidelity  to  sabbath  ob- 
servance, and  the  happy  results  which  have  followed,  may 
be  cited  from  mission-fields.     Some  years  ago  the  Queen 


412  ADDRESSES. 

of  Madagascar  was  informed  by  representatives  of  two 
European  powers  that  they  would  do  themselves  the  honor 
to  call  upon  her  on  the  following  sabbath.  The  queen 
acknowledged  the  intended  courtesy,  and  politely  informed 
those  gentlemen  —  representatives  of  Christian  govern- 
ments —  that  she  observed  the  sabbath,  and  could  not 
receive  them  on  that  day,  but  on  the  day  following.  It 
was  quite  in  keeping  with  such  a  character,  that,  instead 
of  preserving  the  forms  of  royal  state  in  her  intercourse 
with  her  people,  she  was  found  by  Dr.  Mullens,  on  his 
visit  to  Madagascar,  in  attendance  upon  a  public-school 
exhibition,  distributing  prizes  to  the  best  scholars.  In 
explanation  of  her  course,  she  remarked,  **  I  love  God,  and 
I  love  Jesus  Christ,  and  therefore  I  care  for  the  education 
of  my  people."  The  remarkable  success  which  has  at- 
tended missionary  effort  in  that  island  finds  one  of  its 
explanations  in  these  incidents.  Of  hardly  less  signifi- 
cance is  sabbath  observance  in  our  own  New  England. 
Amid  the  rush  of  many  interests,  absorbing  our  time  and 
thought,  we  need  the  quiet  of  the  sabbath  to  deepen  and 
broaden  our  religious  life,  as  much,  perhaps,  in  New  Eng- 
land as  in  Madagascar. 


RIGHT  SABBATH   LAWS  A   NECESSITY. 

BY   REV.    O.    P.    GIFFORD   OF   BOSTON. 

"Law  is  the  embodiment  of  the  moral  sense  of  a  com- 
munity on  any  subject."  And  our  duty  to  our  fellows 
demands  that  our  moral  sense  on  this  Sunday  matter  be 
embodied  in  law.  Law  cannot  give  life  ;  but  it  can  guard 
life,  and  give  it  a  chance  to  develop.  Fences  about  trees 
will  not  hasten  growth,  but  will  keep  the  cattle  off. 


SABBATH  LAWS  A   NECESSITY.  413 

The  Sunday  sentiment  should  be  crystallized  into  Sun- 
day laws,  that  shall  protect  men  against  their  own  igno- 
rance, the  avarice  of  individuals,  and  the  greed  of  cor- 
porations. 

Law  cannot  force  men  to  worship ;  but  it  can  provide 
rest,  and  the  privilege  of  worship.  Law  cannot  say  what 
men  shall  do  ;  but  it  may  say  what  they  shall  7iot  do.  It 
cannot  force  them  into  churches  and  Sunday  schools  ;  but 
it  can  shut  them  out  of  beer-gardens  and  horse-races,  and 
keep  them  from  harbor-excursions. 

Law  can  and  ought  to  guard  conductors  and  drivers,  so 
that  they  can  rest  Sunday  without  risking  their  places  on 
the  horse-cars.  It  ought  to  limit  the  running  of  horse- 
cars  to  certain  hours,  and  diminish  rather  than  multiply 
cars  on  Sunday,  and,  so  far  as  possible,  prohibit  the  run- 
ning of  horse-cars  at  all  on  Sunday. 

Law  ought  to  prohibit  all  excursions  down  the  harbor 
Sundays ;  ought  to  shut  all  the  dram  and  tobacco  shops, 
and  three-fourths  of  the  drug-shops,  and  all  that  retail 
liquor  for  other  than  medicinal  purposes  upon  prescription. 

Law  ought  to  prohibit  the  sale  of  Sunday  newspapers  : 
first,  because  they  are  a  source  of  profits  to  the  publishers, 
and  in  common  with  all  business  should  cease  Sunday ; 
second,  because  the  reading  of  them  lowers  the  tone  of 
public  morals  by  interfering  with  rest  of  the  brain,  and 
filling  the  mind  with  unhealthful  mental  food ;  third,  be- 
cause the  sale  of  them  is  educating  a  class  of  boys  to  be 
Sunday-breakers,  and  thus  fitting  them  to  be  poor  citizens 
by  and  by. 

The  laws  that  shut  the  doors  of  trade  in  dry  goods, 
groceries,  &c.,  and  allow  excursions,  and  traffic  in  liquors, 
tobacco,  and  newspapers,  discriminate  in  favor  of  the  less 
useful  and  more  harmful,  restrict  necessaries,  and  legal- 
ize luxuries.  The  moral  sentiment  of  the  citizens  ought 
to  be  embodied  in  laws  that  shall  express  in  the  State  the 


414  ADDRESSES. 


principles  that  govern  the  private  life  of  Christians  so 
successfully,  in  order  that  vice  may  be  restrained,  good 
order  maintained,  and  the  rising  generations  educated  to 
perpetuate  the  institutions  so  dear  to  every  American 
heart. 

But  we  want  our  convictions  crystallized  into  laws,  not 
only  for  the  defence  of  the  present,  but  still  more  for  the 
education  of  the  rising  generation.  The  boys  in  our 
homes  and  schools  to-day  will  be  men  to-morrow;  and 
what  kind  of  men,  depends  largely  on  their  education  in 
the  State  by  the  laws  on  the  statute-books. 

Henry  Clay  once  said  in  the  United-States  Senate, 
"What  the  law  declares  to  be  property,  is  property ; "  and 
the  declarations  of  the  State  in  the  form  of  law  educate 
boys  to  perpetuate  the  idea  in  those  declarations.  The 
tide  along  the  shore  sets  its  own  limit  by  the  sand  it 
shapes  into  bars  ;  and  so  the  public  sentiment  of  one  gen- 
eration shapes  and  determines  that  of  the  next  by  the  laws 
it  leaves.  Laws  are  the  pilled  rods  that  determine  char- 
acter.* Face  the  rising  generation  with  righteous  laws,  and 
the  future  is  secure. 


OUR  INCREASING  MATERIAL  PROSPERITY  DEMANDS 
THE   SABBATH. 

REMARKS   BY   HON.    EDWARD   S.   TOBEY   OF   BOSTON. 

Two  instances  have  recently  come  within  my  own 
knowledge  illustrating  the  fact  that  the  best  men  of  all 
denominations  are  more  divided  on  the  subject  of  the 
proper  observance  of  the  sabbath  than  on  almost  any 
other. 


MATERIAL  PROSPERITY  AND   THE  SABBATH.     415 

I  know  an  intelligent  deacon  of  one  of  our  oldest 
churches,  who,  as  well  as  other  members  of  Orthodox 
churches,  I  have  heard  justify  excursions  down  the  har- 
bor on  the  sabbath.  On  the  other  side,  a  very  promi- 
nent member  of  a  Unitarian  church  was  one  of  a  party 
with  whom  I  went  down  the  harbor  on  a  week-day  excur- 
sion not  long  ago.  As  we  walked  together  around  Fort 
Warren,  and  looked  down  on  the  passing  steamers,  he 
voluntarily  spoke  of  harbor-excursions  on  the  sabbath.  I 
confess  that  I  was  greatly  astonished  and  gratified  to  find 
him  in  perfect  accord  with  myself  on  that  subject.  He 
condemned  sabbath  excursions  in  unmeasured  terms,  with 
evidence  and  striking  facts  to  support  his  opinions  as  to 
persons  whose  first  downward  step  was  thus  taken. 

This  convention,  and  the  movement  leading  to  it,  comes 
most  opportunely.  It  was  always  needed,  but  never  so 
much  as  at  this  particular  juncture.  The  community  have 
been  steadily,  for  the  last  twenty-five  years,  drifting  un- 
consciously into  the  European  idea  of  keeping  the  sabbath, 
which  some  are  pleased  to  call  "  liberal."  Such  an  in- 
crease in  immigration  as  may  make  it  doubly  difficult  to 
stem  the  tide  of  erroneous  public  opinion  and  action  in 
regard  to  the  sabbath  has  already  commenced.  A  great 
re-action  has  taken  place  in  business  affairs  from  the  terri- 
ble depression  we  have  been  through,  —  a  re-action  even 
more  -rapid  than  some  have  anticipated ;  and  our  country 
is  on  the  eve,  undoubtedly,  of  great  material  prosperity. 
It  therefore  requires  extraordinary  effort  to  bring  the 
spiritual  condition  of  the  people  to  bear  it,  and  to  prevent 
its  naturally  demoralizing  effect. 

Within  three  days  I  have  conversed  with  an  eminent 
gentleman  from  England,  familiar  with  public  affairs  ;  and 
he  expressed  great  apprehension  at  the  present  condition 
of  affairs  on  the  Continent  of  Europe.  The  elements  of 
disturbance  are  very  active  there,  and  the  industrial  classes 


4l6  ADDRESSES. 

are  in  a  distressed  state.  That  gentleman,  a  member  of 
Parliament,  read  a  letter  in  public,  recently,  from  his  con- 
stituency, in  which  they  alleged  that  they  were  starving 
in  England.  Such  a  state  of  things  on  the  other  side  of 
the  ocean,  in  connection  with  the  prosperous  state  on  this 
side,  is  sure  to  stimulate  an  immigration  beyond  any  thing 
seen  for  the  last  ten  years.  Therefore  it  is  now  espe- 
cially needful  and  opportune  to  disseminate  right  opinions 
regarding  the  sabbath,  and  to  counteract  the  tendencies 
which  must  inevitably  come  from  such  a  class  of  popu- 
lation to  desecrate  it. 

The  question  is,  how  most  effectively  to  do  it.  This 
organization  has  taken  one  of  the  first  steps  towards  it. 
Let  me  say  that  unless  we  can  impress  our  public  teachers, 
whom  we  gladly  reverence  as  the  ministers  of  the  gospel, 
with  the  idea  that  the  church  itself  must  be  taught  on  this 
subject,  that  its  spiritual  condition  must  be  so  elevated 
by  teachings  on  this  theme  that  it  will  be  ready  to  accept 
true  views,  we  cannot  hope  to  influence  or  move  the 
great  mass  of  the  community,  who  have  no  conscience 
on  the  subject.  Legislation  has  been  alluded  to  as  one  of 
the  methods  to  guard  the  sacredness  of  the  sabbath.  It 
suggests  the  question,  Who  are  to  be  our  legislators  }  The 
men  who  have  passed  middle  life  are  rapidly  passing  off 
the  stage.  The  laws  are  soon  to  be  made  by  your  sabbath- 
school  scholars.  Now  they  are  within  the  reach  of  the 
preacher  and  the  sabbath-school  teacher ;  and  if,  with  the 
Bible  in  hand,  —  and  there  is  more  in  the  Bible  on  this 
subject  than  most  people  are  aware  of,  —  the  conscience 
of  the  people  can  be  educated,  they  may  safely  be  trusted 
to  make  laws  and  execute  them.  But  even  church-members 
must  be  so  instructed  that  they  will  quite  understand  and 
decide  whether  it  is  right  or  wrong  to  ride  for  pleasure,  for 
example,  on  the  sabbath,  or  to  go  to  the  post-office,  and 
receive  their  letters,  or  put  their  ships  to  sea,  and  indulge 


MATERIAL  PROSPERITY  AND   THE  SABBATH.     417 

in  various  other  practices  on  the  sabbath  which,  without 
reflection,  seem  to  them  rather  harmless,  but  which  are 
wholly  opposed  to  the  spirit  of  Bible  instruction  on  this 
subject. 

I  knew  a  young  merchant  in  this  city  who  thought  he 
might  properly  drive  on  Sunday  afternoons.  He  was  a 
conscientious  young  man,  and  could  not  understand  why 
he  could  not  pursue  his  thoughts  and  contemplations  as 
well  in  his  carriage  as  in  the  house.  He  tried  it.  When 
he  returned,  a  single  observation  brought  that  young  man 
to  realize  his  duty  with  regard  to  keeping  the  sabbath. 
The  poor  hostler  said,  when  the  young  man  came  to  the 
stable,  ''There  is  no  sabbath  for  a  poor  fellow  like  me." 
The  thought  came  into  the  young  merchant's  mind,  ''Then 
I  have  obliged  this  man  to  stand  here  all  day,  if  perchance 
I  should  fancy  to  ride  out  for  pleasure,  that  he  might  serve 
me,  and  thereby  surrender  his  sabbath.  If  it  is  right  for 
me,  it  is  right  for  every  other  man  who  can  command  a 
horse,  to  do  the  same  thing.  This  is  all  wrong :  I  will 
never  do  it  again."     And  he  never  did. 

Again,  I  recollect  another  instance  in  regard  to  this 
same  young  merchant,  who  then  attended  an  Orthodox 
church.  A  good  deacon,  mild  and  gentle  in  his  manners, 
remarked  to  him,  "  Don't  you  think  it  is  rather  a  poor 
plan  to  go  from  the  church  directly  into  the  reading-room, 
and  take  your  letters,  and  turn  your  mind  so  suddenly  from 
subjects  peculiar  to  the  sabbath  } "  Well,  he  began  to 
think,  and  at  once  concluded  that  it  was  not  right.  That 
young  merchant  never  went  again  for  his  letters. 

It  was  the  custom  then  for  merchants  to  put  their  ships 
to  sea  on  Sunday ;  and  this  same  good  deacon  made  a 
quiet  observation,  in  the  form  of  a  question  very  carefully 
put,  to  the  young  merchant,  whether  he  didn't  think  it 
was  rather  a  poor  plan  to  spend  the  forenoon  of  the  sab- 
bath  getting  his  ships  off  to  sea.     The  young  man  was 


41 8  ADDRESSES. 


again  convinced,  and  admitted  it  to  be  wrong.  He  never 
after  that  sent  a  ship  to  sea  on  the  sabbath.  These  three 
incidents  illustrate  what  an  influence  may  be  exerted  in  a 
quiet  way  by  a  faithful  Christian  monitor. 

At  the  seashore,  villages  have  been  greatly  demoralized 
by  the  example  and  influence  of  people  from  the  cities, 
who  come  there  to  spend  the  summer  months,  and  who 
disregard  the  sabbath  by  driving  for  pleasure  and  by  ab- 
sence from  church.  They  are  church-members,  too,  many 
of  them. 

It  is  a  trite  remark,  *'  that  the  sabbath  is  the  bulwark  of 
free  institutions;"  but  it  cannot  be  repeated  too  often, 
especially  to  those  who  are  coming  forward  to  take  the 
responsibilities  of  legislation  and  of  guiding  our  political 
institutions.  This  country  cannot  permanently  retain  its 
nationality  without  a  religious  observance  of  the  sabbath. 
No  nation  can  ever  maintain  a  popular  form  of  government 
unless  there  is  enough  of  religious  principle  in  the  masses 
to  sustain  the  sabbath  and  prevent  its  desecration.  With- 
out this  our  country  will  descend  gradually,  as  papal  coun- 
tries have,  from  one  form  of  wickedness  to  another,  until 
the  people  can  perhaps  endure  the  bull-fight  as  they  do  in 
Spain,  and  cock-fighting  as  they  do  in  Mexico  on  the  sab- 
bath. With  the  foreign  population  swarming  upon  us, 
'this  must  be  the  inevitable  result,  unless  the  Church  of 
^Christ  raises  its  banner  and  influence  to  resist  the  tide 
of  false  ideas  on  sabbath  observance  which  are  rapidly 
becoming  popular. 


CO-OPERATION  OF  FRIENDS  OF  THE  SABBATH.     419 


CO-OPERATION   OF   FRIENDS   OF  THE   SABBATH. 

BY   REV.  YATES   HICKEY  OF  PHILADELPHIA,    SECRETARY   INTERNATIONAL 
SABBATH   ASSOCIATION. 

I  WANT  to  give  words  of  encouragement.  I  have  been 
among  the  commercial  men  of  this  country  a  great  deal. 
I  have  been  in  concerted  action  with  managers  of  railroads 
for  ten  years  past  in  putting  infamous  literature  and  the 
abominable  connected  evils  off  the  thoroughfares  of  this 
country.  Now,  as  to  the  sabbath,  among  those  men  who 
are  denounced  as  men  who  care  not  for  the  desecration  of 
the  sabbath,  there  are  scores  who  are  just  ''biting  a  file" 
on  that  subject ;  and  I  believe  there  is  a  rising  of  moral 
sentiment  in  commercial  circles  through  the  increased  atten- 
tion forced  upon  busijtess  men  and  railroad-managers  by  the 
financial  discipline  through  which  we  have  been  passing 
these  years. 

What  are  the  facts .?  While  these  railroad-managers 
find  it  difficult  to  agree  with  each  other  in  relation  to  their 
freights,  and  many  things  in  which  their  interests  clash, 
in  the  abolition  of  Sunday  trains  they  would,  I  believe, 
honestly  and  earnestly  welcome  pressure  to  bring  them 
together  in  efforts  to  stop  running  Sunday  trains.  One 
man  said,  "We  should  save  one-fourth  of  our  expenses 
by  stopping  our  Sunday  trains."  The  first  vice-president 
of  the  Pennsylvania  road  said  to  me,  ''We  want  every 
wheel  stopped  on  Sunday  for  financial  reasons."  An 
officer  on  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  stated  that 
every  dollar  taken  in  on  the  middle  division  of  that  road 
for  Sunday  traffic  cost  the  company  two  dollars  and  a 
half.      The   greatest   obstacle  to  sabbath  observance  to- 


420  ADDRESSES. 


day  is  the  thoughtless  habits  of  Christian  people  them- 
selves. 

Railroad-men  know  this.  Col.  Scott  knows  this  ;  Mr. 
Vanderbilt  knows  it ;  Mr.  Jewett  knows  it ;  Mr.  Garratt 
knows  it.  I  have  been  to  these  men  personally,  and  they 
have  said  not  one  word  of  discouragement;  but,  "If  only 
the  people  will  stop  demanding  of  us  Sunday  traffic,  we 
will  gladly  see  that  no  wheel  shall  be  turned  on  Sunday." 
So  we  are  going  to  petition  Congress  to  instruct  the 
Postmaster-General  to  stop  making  Sunday  contracts  for 
carrying  the  mails,  and  that  would  stop  hundreds  of  trains. 
Then  we  shall  ask  the  Postmaster-General  to  discontinue 
collection  and  distribution  of  mail  on  Sunday  ;  and  I  think, 
if  the  great  city  of  Londojt  can  get  along  without  mail- 
distribution  on  Sunday,  a7iy  other  place  can  ! 

No  local  railroad-train  runs  Sunday  in  Canada.  No 
canal-work  is  done :  no  mail-work  in  Ontario,  Sunday ; 
and  they  are  working  for  that  result  in  Quebec.  They 
would  have  no  through  traffic  on  their  great  thorough- 
fares, but  for  competition  with  American  lines.  When, 
in  one  place,  some  of  the  people  started  some  local  trains, 
the  community  came  down  on  those  trains,  and  they  had 
to  stop  them  because  it  would  not  pay  ;  the  people  would 
not  let  them  pay. 

My  word  in  closing  is.  The  necessity  for  concert  of  action^ 
union  of  effort,  and  organisation  to  this  end,  in  all  parts  of 
our  country.  Now,  as  to  knowing  where  we  stand,  and 
what  answers  to  give :  I  was  asked  by  as  high  a  railroad- 
official  as  there  is  in  this  country,  *'  What  kind  of  a  law 
are  you  going  to  bring  on  us  } "  supposing,  perhaps,  we 
were  coming  with  a  kind  of  claw-hammer  law ;  but  I 
replied,  "The  divine  law."  I  had  written  on  one  side  of 
a  sheet  the  Commandment,  "  Remember  the  sabbath  day 
to  keep  it  holy ; "  on  the  other  side,  God's  comment  on 
it ;   and,  as   that   comment   is  the  only  speech  I  usually 


HORSE-CARS  AND   THE  SABBATH.  42 1 

make,  I  repeated  it  to  him  :  "■  If  thou  turn  away  thy  foot 
from  the  sabbath,  from  doing  thy  pleasure  on  my  holy 
day,  I  will  cause  thee  to  ride  upon  the  high  places  of  the 
earth,  and  feed  thee  with  the  heritage  of  Jacob  thy  father ; 
for  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it."  Then  said 
I,  "  Colonel,  I  think  there  are  dividends  in  it.''  Said  he, 
"  That  is  what  the  stockholders  want." 


HORSE-CARS  AND  THE   SABBATH. 

BY   M.    FIELD    FOWLER,    ESQ.,    OF   BOSTON. 

There  has  been  much  said  about  steamboats  and  rail- 
roads, but  little  about  Sunday  horse-cars.  You  may  ask 
why  I  am  invited  to  speak  on  this  question.  I  was  one  of 
the  original  corporators — you  might  say  the  projector  — 
of  the  Metropolitan  Railroad  in  Boston.  We  applied  to 
the  Legislature  in  1853  for  a  charter,  and  in  the  same 
session  of  the  Legislature  the  people  of  Cambridge  also 
petitioned  for  a  charter  for  a  road  into  Boston  ;  and,  to 
show  the  change  in  public  sentiment  in  twenty-six  years, 
the  charter  of  the  Cambridge  road  was  opposed  by  the 
people  there,  unless  they  would  insert  a  clause  that  the 
road  should  not  run  on  Sundays.  When  the  Metropolitan 
road  was  first  put  in  operation,  we  did  not  run  Sundays  : 
we  did  not  suppose  the  people  would  tolerate  it.  We 
went  on  some  months  running  week-days.  Finally  some 
of  the  church-going  people,  good  Christians  I  presume, 
came  to  us,  and  wanted  us  to  run  a  few  cars  to  accommo- 
date them  in  going  to  church.  That  was  the  entering- 
wedge.  We  put  on  a  few  cars  to  please  them,  and  they 
were  crowded.     Of  course  we  could  not  keep  the  public 


422  ADDRESSES. 


from  them,  and  the  clamor  was  for  more  cars.  A  dis- 
tincfuished  merchant  of  Boston,  who  resided  at  the  South 
End,  said  to  me,  '*  My  wife  and  I  waited  half  an  hour  last 
Sunday  for  a  horse-car.  You  should  run  more  cars-." 
Soon  after  I  met  another  merchant  who  said,  ''Mr.  Fow- 
ler, if  you  run  your  horse-cars  Sunday,  it  is  sacrilege,  and 
I  go  in  for  taking  up  your  tracks."  If  we  had  heeded 
his  opinion,  I  think  we  would  have  been  much  better 
off;  but  the  majority  favored  Sunday  horse-cars,  and  we 
wanted  to  please  the  public ;  and  they  ran  them  in  New 
York,  and  why  shouldn't  we  in  Boston  .?  The  result  was, 
we  ran  our  cars  Sundays  almost  as  we  did  on  week-days. 

This  thing  went  on.  Soon  I  saw  some  of  the  evils 
growing  out  of  this  business.  In  the  first  place,  we  had 
much  trouble  with  our  conductors  in  keeping  them  honest. 
It  is  impossible  to  get  honest  men,  and  keep  them  so,  and 
make  them  work  on  Sundays.  You  employ  them  to  vio- 
late the  Fourth  Commandment,  and  expect  them  to  respect 
the  Eighth :  you  find  human  nature  is  such  that  both  con- 
ductors and  drivers  suffer.  Drivers  become  reckless,  are 
not  careful ;  their  faculties  become  blunted,  and  more  acci- 
dents result.  The  managers  employed  detectives.  I  re- 
member a  young  man  came  to  one  of  the  directors,  and 
wanted  to  know  why  he  was  discharged.  "Because  we 
think  more  money  goes  into  your  pockets,  than  comes 
out."  He  confessed  it;  and  the  reason  he  gave  was,  that 
his  driver  said,  if  he  would  not  divide  with  him,  he  would 
put  him  over  the  road  so  that  he  wouldn't  get  half  as 
many  passengers.     In  every  way  it  was  demoralizing. 

Furthermore,  as  to  the  horses,  what  is  the  result .'  You 
work  horses  every  day,  year  in  and  year  out.  Talk  about 
cruelty  to  animals  :  why,  it  is  like  putting  a  horse  on  a 
treadmill,  and  keeping  him  going  until  he  almost  drops. 
The  result  is,  you  use  up  horses  in  a  very  short  time.  Of 
course  some  work  them  harder  than  others ;  but  I  believe 


HORSE-CARS  AND    THE  SABBATH.  423 

two  or  three  years  is  considered  about  the  average  length 
of  usefuhiess  of  a  horse  on  New  York  roads,  and  three  or 
four  hei^e,  perhaps.  The  harder  you  work  them,  the  more 
you  have  to  feed  them.  The  president  of  one  of  the  horse- 
railroads  in  New  York  told  me  he  made  an  experiment,  and 
decided  the  thing  to  his  satisfaction.  He  found,  that,  on 
every  thousand  horses,  it  cost  them  a  thousand  dollars  a 
day  more  to  feed  them  than  if  they  had  Sunday  to  rest  in. 
People  do  not  understand  this.  I  often  hear  it  said,  "You 
must  have  more  horses,  so  as  to  let  them  rest."  Now, 
suppose  you  employ  six  hundred  horses,  and  work  them 
six  days  in  the  week.  Buy  a  hundred  more,  and  they 
will  make  up  one-seventh.  See  how  that  would  work. 
Suppose  your  horses,  like  Balaam's  ass,  could  speak.  You 
go  into  your  stable  Monday,  and  say,  "  All  those  horses 
that  rested  yesterday,  we  want  to  work  to-day."  You  find 
one  hundred  that  have  lain  still  quite  ready,  the  other  six 
hundred  say,  **  We  have  been  working  seven  days."  All 
you  can  do  is  to  let  another  hundred  rest,  and  so  the  next 
day  you  still  have  five  hundred  that  have  had  no  rest  for 
eight  days.  I  am  convinced  by  investigation  that  the  run- 
ning of  horse-cars  on  Sunday  involves  the  employment  of 
certainly  twenty-five  per  cent  if  not  more  of  horses  than  if 
you  rest  them  on  that  day.  Take  the  omnibuses  :  they 
don't  run  Sundays.  Mr.  Hathorne  tried  it  one  year,  and 
he  said  if  kept  up  it  would  ruin  him.  New  York  omni- 
buses do  not  run  Sundays  ;  there  is  no  profit  in  it.  The 
Philadelphia  horse-cars  did  not  run  for  ten  years  after  they 
were  started  ;  and  I  have  investigated  the  subject,  and  I 
have  found  invariably  that  those  horses  that  work  only  six 
days  in  the  week  earn  six  hundred  and  seventy  dollars  a 
year,  while  the  Metropolitan  horses,  working  seven  days 
in  the  week,  earn  only  about  six  hundred  and  two  dollars 
a  year;  and  the  horses  of  Philadelphia  save  all  the  ex- 
penses of  conductors  and  drivers  on  Sunday. 


424  ADDRESSES. 


Mr.  Hathorne  told  me,  I  think,  that  his  horses  in  six 
days  will  travel  from  one  hundred  and  twenty  to  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty  miles,  while  horses  worked  seven  days  a 
week,  like  the  Metropolitan  and  others,  travel  only  about 
one  hundred  miles.  You  cannot  get  so  much  work  out  of 
them  as  when  you  give  them  one  day  to  recuperate. 
What  is  the  average  life  of  a  horse }  Perhaps  few  can 
answer.  In  1856  I  was  at  the  stables  of  the  Metropolitan 
road,  and  the  superintendent  said  to  me,  '*  There's  a  fine 
horse  some  gentleman  ought  to  own.  It  is  a  pity  to  put 
her  on  the  horse-cars,  she  is  so  young."  — "  How  old  is 
she.?"  —  ''Four  years  old  :  she  is  a  nice  traveller."  I  pur- 
chased her,  and  kept  her  for  twenty-two  years  :  she  died 
two  years  ago  from  an  accident,  I  think.  So  she  lived  to 
be  twenty-six  years  old.  I  have  heard  of  horses  thirty 
years  old,  but  you  don't  find  them  on  the  horse-cars. 

We  know  the  arguments  in  favor  of  horse-cars  on  Sun- 
day. They  say  they  take  people  to  church,  and  that  is 
considered  a  valid  argument.  Well,  perhaps  it  is,  and  you 
might  argue  that  to  build  churches  on  Sunday  was  a  good 
work.  But  I  contend  there  is  no  necessity  nor  exigency 
to-day  that  there  was  not  before  horse-railroads  were  estab- 
lished. They  bring  people  in  from  the  suburbs  to  church- 
es like  Trinity  and  Park  Street  that  do  not  need  their 
support ;  and  these  out-of-town  churches  languish  for  want 
of  these  very  people  who  should  stay  at  home.  People 
say  —  I  goto  St.  Paul's  —  "How  are  we  to  go  to  St. 
Paul's  Church  if  you  take  off  the  horse-cars  }  "  I  say,  '*  If 
the  horse-cars  didn't  run  on  Sunday  we  would  have  a 
church  as  good  as  St.  Paul's  in  our  own  neighborhood ; 
but  if  you  must  go  to  St.  Paul's  I  would  furnish  you  a  car 
and  horses  on  condition  that  you  employ  your  own  driver, 
and  pay  him  ;  and  I  would  not  charge  you  a  cent.  The 
car  might  carry  you  down  and  back  on  Sunday."  But  you 
say,  ''You  work  your  horses,  then,  on  Sunday."     Suppose 


HORSE-CARS  AND    THE  SABBATH.  425 

we  grant  the  use  of  twenty  horse-cars  on  Sunday, — that 
would  take  forty  horses.  Those  forty  horses  could  lie 
still  next  day :  forty  horses  out  of  two  thousand  is  a  trifle. 

Now,  some  say  the  Fourth  Commandment  was  made 
for  the  Jews  only,  and  applied  to  them  only.  Well,  it 
says,  *'  Nor  thy  cattle,  nor  thy  stranger  that  is  within  thy 
gates,"  —  the  cattle  are  put  before  the  stranger  even. 
Now,  do  you  suppose  the  Almighty  intended  only  the 
Jews'  cattle  should  rest  on  Sunday  t  Didn't  he  intend  the 
Gentile  cattle  as  well,  and  all  other  cattle  1 

There  is  one  thing  you  are  pretty  unanimous  in,  that 
running  steam-railroads  Sunday  is  an  evil.  Well,  I  want 
to  put  this  to  you  :  Take  ten  horse-cars,  ten  conductors, 
ten  drivers,  and  during  the  day  it  takes  a  hundred  horses, 
and  run  them  fifty  miles  up  and  down  the  streets  of  Bos- 
ton ;  or  hitch  those  horse-cars,  and  make  a  train,  put  on 
one  engineer,  one  stoker,  and  one  conductor,  and  take 
them  fifty  miles  out  into  the  country  :  which  is  the  lesser 
evil }  The  steam-railroad  :  it  saves  the  horses,  and  takes 
comparatively  few  to  run  the  train.  Our  friend  Mr. 
Dodge,  of  New  York,  said  he  was  sorry  that  the  elevated 
railroads  run  Sunday  in  New  York.  So  am  I ;  but,  if  they 
will  or  must  have  cars  on  Sunday  in  New  York,  the 
elevated  railroads  are  the  lesser  evil,  because  one  dummy 
on  the  elevated  railroads  will  do  as  much  work  in  a  day  as 
ten  horse-cars,  ten  drivers,  ten  conductors,  and  a  hundred 
horses. 

I  believe  honestly,  that,  if  the  horse-railroads  here  should 
stop  running  Sunday,  their  expenses  could  be  reduced 
from  twenty-five  to  thirty-three  per  cent,  and  they  could 
carry  passengers  at  four  and  five  cents  instead  of  five  and 
six  as  now,  and  make  just  as  much  money.  They  tax  the 
people  who  ride  on  week-days  to  support  the  Sunday 
travel. 

Now,  is  it  right  to  run  Sunday  horse-cars  ?     You  must 


426  ADDRESSES. 


answer  for  yourselves.  But  I  am  amazed  to  think  Episco- 
palians—  and  I  am  one  of  them — go  to  church  Sunday 
after  Sunday,  and  in  response  to  the  Fourth  Command- 
ment say,  ''Lord,  have  mercy  upon  us,  and  incline  our 
hearts  to  keep  this  law,"  and  then  go  out,  and  get  into  a 
Sunday  horse-car. 

I  have  given  you  the  result  of  my  twenty-five  years  ex- 
perience and  study  in  connection  with  horse-railroads,  — 
I  am  not  connected  with  any  of  them  now,  I  am  thankful, 
—  and  I  am  very  glad  to  see  this  subject  of  a  sabbath 
convention  taken  up  in  such  earnest.  Years  ago,  as  soon 
as  the  scales  fell  from  my  eyes,  I  went  to  work  in  Boston 
to  get  up  a  sabbath  committee.  We  had  several  meetings  : 
the  venerable  William  Ropes  took  great  interest  in  it ; 
but  it  was  during  the  war,  and  the  public  mind  was  too 
much  occupied ;  and  the  thing  died  out.  But  I  am  glad 
to  see  this  movement,  and  I  hope  it  will  go  on ;  and  if  we 
all  go  to  work  honestly  and  faithfully,  and  pray  God  to 
help  us,  some  of  us  will  live  to  see  the  observance  of  the 
sabbath  throughout  the  land. 


THE    OLD   PATHS   OF   OBEDIENCE   TO   GOD'S   LAWS. 

BY    REV.    S.    F.    UPHAM,    D.D.,    OF   BOSTON. 

If  any  thing  permanent  comes  out  of  this  convention, 
there  will  be  a  getting-back  to  the  old  paths. 

I  very  much  like  to  hear  that  the  law  of  the  sabbath  is 
based  in  man's  necessities  ;  yet  I  do  most  fully  believe  the 
chief  reason  why  every  man  and  woman  who  claims  to  be 
a  Christian  should  keep  the  sabbath  day  is  because  God 
has  ordained  it.     There  must  be  a  going-back  to  the  old, 


THE  OLD  PATHS  OF  OBEDIENCE.  A-7 

never-to-be-obsolete  book,  the  Bible  ;  and  because  in  that 
book  God  has  said,  "  Remember  the  sabbath  day  to  keep 
it  holy,"  we  must  keep  it  holy.  I  do  not  subscribe  at  all 
to  the  doctrine  that  the  Fourth  Commandment  is  abro- 
gated. The  Fourth  Commandment  is  doubly  binding  on 
you  and  me,  because  the  rest  of  God  our  Maker  is  con- 
joined with  the  resurrection  of  God  our  Saviour.  We 
must  even  present  this  thought  to  the  people,  that  Sun- 
day is  the  Christian  sabbath  ;  and  that  any  man  who  takes 
down  the  shutters  of  his  store  Sunday  morning  takes 
down  the  curses  of  God  Almighty ;  and  to  run  a  train  of 
cars  on  the  Lord's  Day  is  to  invite  a  WoUaston  disaster. 

Now,  these  are  old-fashioned  truths,  and  they  smack  a 
little  of  Puritanism.  I  wish  it  would  rain  Puritanism  for 
a  month  !  It  is  high  time  we  got  through  sneering  at  the 
zeal  and  constancy  and  faith  of  our  New  England  fathers. 
I  remember  well  in  my  boyhood  the  Puritan  Sunday,  and  I 
say  it  was  not  to  me  a  dull  day,  but  a  day  of  delight. 
I  was  made  to  go  to  the  house  of  prayer ;  I  was  made  to 
hear  two  good  square  sermons  on  the  Lord's  Day :  and  I 
am  all  the  better  for  it. 

The  pulpit  is  somewhat  responsible  for  the  present  state 
of  things.  The  church  ought  to  be  like  modern  hotels  on 
the  European  plan,  where  they  have  meals  at  all  hours  ;  in 
other  words,  the  church  of  God  ought  to  be  open  for  ser- 
vices all  through  the  Lord's  Day.  Somebody  said  here 
to-day,  that  no  man  could  preach  more  than  one  decent 
sermon  a  day. 

The  fact  to  be  made  emphatic  is,  God  has  a  law.  There 
are  people  in  New  England,  who  have  got  beyond  that 
idea,  —  a  moral  kind  of  people  who  contend  that  there  is 
no  law  that  is  binding  upon  them  :  they  are  cultured  peo- 
ple, they  are ;  they  have  been  through  some  of  the  schools, 
and  they  know  how  to  eat  with  a  fork !  and  the  idea  that 
there  is  any  kind  of  a  law  binding  upon  them,  why,  it  is 


428  ADDRESSES. 


ridiculous!  Now,  then,  God  has  a  law,  a  law  holy,  just, 
and  good,  and  as  eternal  as  the  throne  of  God ;  and  his 
law  is,  that  we  shall  remember  the  sabbath  day  to  keep  it 
holy. 

I  knew  a  man  in  Chicopee,  who  had  a  godly  wife, 
a  member  of  the  church ;  and  he  was  a  livery-stable- 
keeper.  His  wife  used  to  say  to  him,  "Now,  my  husband, 
it  is  absolutely  wicked  for  you  to  let  horses  on  Sunday." 
She  didn't  say  any  thing  about  the  financial  question  at 
all :  she  simply  said  it  was  wicked.  She  said  that  over  and 
over  to  him,  and  he  would  parry  the  blows.  At  last,  one 
New  Year's  morning,  it  happened  to  be  Sunday,  he  did 
not  go  to  the  stable  as  usual ;  and  she  said,  "  What  is  the 
matter  .?  "  —  '*  Oh,  nothing  !  "  he  said  :  ''  only  I  made  up  my 
mind  this  morning,  that  I  will  try  to  act  on  what  you  have 
been  saying  to  me.  You  have  told  me  all  these  years  that 
it  is  wicked  to  let  horses  on  the  Lord's  Day,  because  it  is 
the  sabbath.  Now  I  am  going  to  try  this  year :  if  I  fail,  I 
fail ;  but  no  horse  shall  go  out  of  my  stable  through  all 
the  year,  on  Sunday.  Now,"  said  he, — for  he  told  me  this 
story  himself,  —  ''I  kept  God's  law  as  my  wife  would  have 
me  keep  it ;  and  the  result  was,  that  was  the  very  best 
year  financially  I  had  ever  had."  It  pays  to  keep  God's 
law  ! 


HISTORICAL    SKETCH. 

BY   REV.   WILL  C.   WOOD  OF  SCITUATE. 

The  Massachusetts  Sabbath  Conventions  had  their 
inception  in  the  Evangelical  Ministers'  Association  of 
Boston  and  vicinity,  familiarly  called  the  "Alliance." 

In  January,  1879,  the  Alliance  adopted  a  resolution  pre- 
sented by  the  secretary,  Rev.  Will  C.  Wood,  to  hold  these 
conventions. 

The  committee  appointed  were,  Rev.  Andrew  Mc- 
Keown,  D.D.,  Chairman,  Rev.  Alexander  McKenzie,  D.D., 
Rev.  William  W.  Newton,  Rev.  Cyrus  Cunningham,  Rev. 
Albert  H.  Currier,  Rev.  Franklin  Johnson,  D.D.,  Rev.  J.  C. 
Foster,  D.D.,  Rev.  Daniel  Steele,  D.D.,  Rev.  Heman  Lin- 
coln, D.D.,  Rev.  Will  C.  Wood,  Secretary.  The  sub- 
committee were  Rev.  Dr.  McKeown,  Rev.  A.  H.  Currier, 
Rev.  Dr.  Foster,  Rev.  Will  C.  Wood.  They  were  in- 
trusted with  the  entire  arrangements  for  the  convention, 
and  the  revision  and  publication  of  this  volume. 

They  early  put  themselves  into  communication  with  the 
pastors  of  Springfield,  who  heartily  entered  into  the  plan, 
and  appointed  an  efficient  committee,  —  Rev.  Messrs. 
W.  T.  Eustis,  Washington  Gladden,  A.  K.  Potter,  John  C. 
Brooks,  L.  H.  Cone,  and  Joseph  Scott. 

Besides  the  eminent  writers  secured,  many  distinguished 
persons  were  invited,  who  could  not  attend,  among  them 
Gen.  Hawley,  whose  noble  word  is  worth  a  hundred 
speeches :  "  Before  God,  I  am  afraid  to  open  the 
Centennial  gates  on  the  Sabbath." 

429 


430  HISTORICAL  SKETCH. 

A  "  Statement  of  Principles,"  drawn  up  by  Rev.  W.  W. 
Atterbury,  Secretary  New  York  Sabbath  Committee,  was 
sent  out  in  letters-missive,  as  the  basis  of  the  convention. 

STATEMENT   OF   PRINCIPLES. 

The  convention  is  called  on  the  following  basis,  and  will  consider 
only  questions  directly  relevant  thereto.  The  statement  appended 
will  be  read  at  the  opening  of  the  convention,  and  will  be  voted  upon 
at  the  close  of  the  second  day's  morning  session:  — 

First.  —  We  hold  the  Sabbath,  or  weekly  rest-day,  as  founded  by 
the  Creator  in  the  constitution  of  man,  as  embodied  in  the  fourth 
commandment  of  the  Decalogue,  as  recognized  and  confirmed  by  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  as  re-appearing  with  new  spiritual  significance 
in  the  Lord's  Day  of  the  Christian  Church. 

We  aim  to  promote  among  Christians  the  sense  of  its  divine 
authority,  and  the  more  conscientious  observance  of  it  against  the 
influences  which  now  prevail  to  secularize  it. 

Second. — While  the  State  can  not  and  should  not  enforce  or  inter- 
fere with  the  religious  observance  of  the  Sabbath,  yet  the  weekly 
rest-day  exists  also  as  a  civil  institictio7t^  maintained  by  law  and  cus- 
tom from  the  beginning  of  our  history,  and  vitally  related  to  the  well- 
being  of  individuals  and  of  society,  and  to  the  stabihty  of  our  free 
institutions. 

We  aim  to  promote  among  our  fellow-citizens  of  all  classes  such  a 
true  understanding  of  its  value  to  themselves,  to  their  families,  and 
to  the  State,  as  will  lead  them  to  resist  whatever  tends  to  deprive 
them  of  it,  and  to  sustain  the  just  laws  which  protect  their  right  to  it. 
.  We,  therefore,  as  representatives  of  the  evangelical  churches  of 
Massachusetts,  affirm  the  foregoing  principles,  and  pledge  ourselves 
more  faithfully  to  teach  and  observe  the  religious  Sabbath,  and  more 
watchfully  and  strenuously  to  maintain  against  all  encroachments  the 
civil  Sabbath,  as  a  principal  cause  of  the  intelhgence,  freedom,  secur- 
ity, and  happiness  of  our  beloved  Commonwealth. 

The  Springfield  Convention  comprised  the  evangelical 
churches  west  of  Worcester  County.  Its  sessions  were 
Oct.  15  and  16,  in  State-street  Baptist  Church.  "The 
Springfield  Republican"  of  Oct.  16  and  17  gives  ample 
reports.     The  convention   was   "notable  in  the   number 


.       HISTORICAL  SKETCH.  43 1 

and  reputation  of  the  clergymen  present."  "The  audience 
in  the  evening  packed  the  church."  "  The  strangers 
present  were  hospitably  entertained  by  the  State-street 
Baptist  people."  Rev.  President  J.  H.  Seelye,  D.D.,  of 
Amherst  College,  made  an  extemporaneous  opening  ad- 
dress, and  papers  were  read  successively  by  Rev.  Messrs. 
Atterbury,  Thomas,  Bacon,  Gordon,  Peck,  Smyth,  King, 
and  Love.  The  Springfield  committee  considered  their 
meeting  a  grand  success.  , 

The  Eastern  convention  met  at  Boston  the  next  week,  J 
Oct.  21  and  22.  Eleven  hundred  letters  were  sent;  but 
many  churches  were  unrepresented.  Hon.  James  White 
was  president ;  the  vice-presidents  were  Rev.  Edwin  B. 
Webb,  D.D.,  Rev.  W.  W.  Newton,  Rev.  William  R.  Clark, 
D.D.,  Rev.  C.  B.  Crane,  D.D.,  Rev.  W.  M.  Baker,  D.D., 
Deacon  Ezra  Farnsworth,  Hon.  E.  S.  Tobey,  Rev.  E.  K. 
Alden,  D.D.,  Rev.  N.  G.  Clark,  D.D.,  Rev.  Joseph  Cum- 
mings,  D.D.,  Rev.  Lewis  B.  Bates,  Rev.  Raymond  H.  See- 
ley,  D.D.,  Rev.  J.  W.  Wellman,  D.D.,  Rev.  S.  E.  Herrick, 
D.D.,  Deacon  G.  W.  Chipman,  Hon.  J.  Warren  Merrill, 
Rev.  W.  S.  Studley,  D.D. ;  Secretaries,  Rev.  Will  C.  Wood, 
Rev.  W.  J.  Batt,  Rev.  A.  E.  Manning,  Rev.  D.  Henry 
Taylor ;  Treasurer,  Rev.  D.  W.  Waldron. 

Mount-Vernon  and  Somerset  Churches  were  generously 
opened  to  the  conventions.  The  people  of  Boston  fur- 
nished ample  entertainment  to  delegates. 

The  opening  prayer  was  by  Rev.  Dr.  Blagden.  The 
sessions  occupied  two  days  and  evenings.  The  '*  State- 
ment of  Principles  "  was  adopted  unanimously,  as  it  had 
been  at  'Springfield,  by  rising  vote. 

On  motion  of  Rev.  Dr.  McKeown,  it  was  then  re- 
solved, — 

"  That  a  committee  of  thirteen  be  appointed  as  the  State  Standing 
Committee  on  Sabbath  Observance,  whose  duty  it  shall  be  to  procure 
the  appointment  of  a  similar  committee  in  each  town  of  the  Common- 


432  HISTORICAL  SKETCH. 

wealth,  which,  together  with  the  central  committee,  shall  constitute 
a  Sabbath  League,  to  take  such  measures  from  time  to  time  as  shall 
seem  to  them  necessary  and  feasible  for  the  better  maintenance  of 
the  Lord's  Day." 

That  committee  now  stands  thus :  Hon.  James  White, 
Chairmaji ;  Rev.  Dr.  McKeown,  Hon.  E.  H.  Dunn,  Russell 
Sturgis,  Esq.,  M.  Field  Fowler,  Esq.,  Rev.  William  Graham, 
D.D.,  Rev.  O.  P.  Gifford,  Rev.  A.  H.  Plumb,  Deacon  O.  M. 
Wentworth,  Hon.  Rufus  S.  Frost,  John  F.  Colby,  Esq., 
and  Will  C.  Wood,  Secretary. 

As  a  basis  of  operation  and  co-operation,  they  awaited 
the  discussion  in  January,  1880,  before  the  "Evangelical 
Ministers'  Association,"  on  '*  What  is  just,  wise,  and 
humane  to  insist  upon,  at  present,  in  the  execution  of  our 
Sunday  laws  }  "  The  points  presented,  by  a  committee  of 
which  Judge  E.  H.  Bennett  of  Boston  University  was 
chairman,  were  unanimously  indorsed  by  the  Association, 
by  a  standing  vote  of  some  three  hundred  ministers 
present.  March  i,  1880,  they  issued  a  ''circular"  con- 
taining in  full  the  Massachusetts  Sunday  law,  with 

SIX   POINTS:    BASIS    OF   OPERATION   AND    CO- 
OPERATION. 

I.  Under  General  Statutes,  chap.  84,  sects,  i  and  2,  the  absolute 
legal  right  of  every  employee  of  corporation  or  individual  to  the 
rest  of  the  entire  Lord's  Day.  We  desire  to  call  the  attention  of 
employees  throughout  the  State  to  their  legal  right  to  a  Sabbath  free 
from  call,  order,  or  command  of  employer,  corporate  or  individual, 
and  free  from  liability  to  discharge,  or  diminution  of  wages  for  non- 
performance of  Sunday  work. 

We  call  the  attention  of  railroads,  manufactories,  and  other  corpo- 
rations to  the  fact  that  in  demanding  Sunday  labor  they  infringe  law, 
oppress  labor,  and  demand  and  expect  what  they  have  no  legal  right 
to  require,  —  work  when  the  law  secures  rest  to  men  in  their  employ. 

II.  Under  chap.  84,  sect.  2,  the  stopping  of  all  Sunday  passenger- 
trains,  except  from  considerations  of  necessity  and  charity. 

Under  chap.  84,  sect.  2,  the  stopping  all  excursion-trains  whatever. 


HISTORICAL  SKETCH.  433 

Under  chap.  84,  sect.  2,  the  stopping  of  all  freight-trains  whatever 
within  the  limits  of  the  Commonwealth,  in  whatsoever  place  they 
may  happen  to  be  at  sunrise  of  the  Lord's  Day. 

Under  chap.  84,  sect,  i,  the  stopping  of  all  work  in  railroad-shops. 

Under  chap.  84,  sect,  i,  the  stopping  of  all  railroad-work  in  making 
repairs,  building  bridges,  &c.,  on  Sunday. 

III.  Under  chap.  84,  sect,  i,  the  stopping  of  the  Sunday  issue  of 
papers,  magazines,  &c. 

Under  chap.  84,  sect,  i,  the  stopping  of  the  sale  by  publishers, 
newsboys,  store-keepers,  or  carriers,  of  papers,  magazines,  &c. 

IV.  Under  chap.  84,  sect,  i,  the  stopping  of  all  sales  of  merchan- 
dise on  the  Lord's  Day,  including  wares,  fruits,  confectionery,  cigars, 
tobacco,  and  intoxicating  liquors  ;  excepting  for  necessity  and  charity, 
medicines,  and,  until  nine  o'clock  A.M.,  milk,  bread,  and  other  cooked 
eatables. 

V.  Under  chap.  84,  sect.  4,  the  stopping  of  all  Sunday-evening 
entertainments,  except  "  concerts  of  sacred  music." 

VI.  Under  chap.  84,  sect,  i,  the  stopping  of  all  games  of  ball,  or 
other  sports,  in  streets  of  the  town  or  fields  of  the  country. 

It  is,  perhaps,  too  early  to  express  an  opinion  of  the 
conventions,  and  this  volume,  their  fruitage ;  but  we 
think  we  are   not  wrong  in   gratefully   recognizing  their 

general  superiority,  like 

"  the  tree  of  life, 
High  eminent,  blooming  ambrosial  fruit  of  vegetable  gold." 

From  the  outset,  our  New  England  fathers  regarded  the 
Sabbath  as  a  fountain  of  life.  This  century  has  witnessed 
great  united  efforts  to  keep  that  well  unchoked  and  un- 
defiled. 

The  first  Sabbath  Convention  we  are  aware  of  was  the 
Middlesex  County  Convention,  Sept.  5,  18 14,  at  Burling- 
ton, Mass.,  and  Concord,  Oct.  26.  Thirteen  towns  were 
represented.  Rev.  Justin  Edwards,  D.D.,  of  Andover, 
was  prominent.  An  "Address"  was  published.  In  i8or 
an  "Address"  had  been  published  from  Northampton 
by  the  Northern  Association,  of  Hampshire  County,  to 
their  churches. 


434  HISTORICAL  SKETCH. 

In  May,  1828,  in  New -York  City,  three  hundred  dele- 
gates met,  representing  fourteen  States  and  Territories. 
Those  present,  these  three  days,  declared  they  ''never 
witnessed  an  occasion  of  such  interest."  The  design  was 
to  form  a  general  Sabbath  Union  ;  and  an  auxiliary  con- 
vention met  in  Boston,  May  30. 

A  great  Sabbath  movement  culminating  about  this  time 
was  the  Sunday  mail  agitation.  In  18 10  a  law  passed  re- 
quiring Sunday  delivery,  which  was  made  more  exacting 
in  1825.  But  in  1829,  467  petitions  were  presented  to  Con- 
gress, deprecating  Sunday  mails.  Among  the  petitioners 
we  find  Josiah  Ouincy,  Thomas  L.  Winthrop,  Samuel  T. 
Armstrong,  Isaac  Parker  (Chief  Justice),  John  C.  Warren, 
M.D.,  Robert  G.  Shaw,  Abbott  Lawrence. 

In  May,  1830,  Senator  Frelinghuysen  presented  the 
subject  to  the  United-States  Senate  in  a  form  in  which 
we  trust  it  may  yet  be  agitated  successfully  :  — 

''Resolved,  That  the  Committee  on  Post-Offices  and  Post-Roads 
be  instructed  to  report  a  bill,  repealing  so  much  of  the  act  on  the 
regulation  of  post-offices  as  requires  the  delivery  of  letters,  packets, 
and  papers  on  the  Sabbath  ;  and,  further,  to  prohibit  the  transporta- 
tion of  the  mail  on  that  day." 

In  Great  Britain  a  nobler  policy  prevails.  The  "  Inter- 
national Sabbath  Association  Reporter,"  1880,  of  Phila- 
delphia, states  :  — 

"  I.  London  has  no  Sunday  delivery  or  collection.  2.  Edinburgh, 
Glasgow,  Belfast,  and  114  other  towns  have  no  carrier  delivery.  3. 
3,000  rural  postmen  rest.  4.  1,781  post-offices  are  closed  on  the 
Lord's  Day.  And  the  work  of  closing  out  all  postal  work  in  Great 
Britain  is  steadily  progressing."  "  I  did  not,"  adds  Mr.  Hickey, 
"watch  the  London  Post-Office  the  whole  of  anyone  Sabbath;  but 
I  saw  no  mail  work  whatever  transacted,  except  the  depositing  of 
mail-matter  by  the  people  in  the  street  boxes,  and  I  was  assured  re- 
peatedly that  there  was  none.  So  much  for  personal  knowledge. 
The  wholly  reliable  authorities  I  give  are  as  follows :  One  document 
of  the  London  Society  for  Lord's  Day  Observance,  called  'Sunday 


HISTORICAL  SKETCH.  435 

Postal  Work,'  1878,  from  which  the  above  facts  are  given;  'The 
Postman's  Friend,'  which  seems  to  be  later,  and  gives  4,000  instead 
of  3,000  who  rest,  and  Belfast  and  120  towns  instead  of  114,  with  no 
Sabbath  delivery,  showing  a  fine  growth  in  observance.  ^  Every  dis- 
trict may  for  itself  caiise  Sunday  deliveries  to  cease;''  and  'every  indi- 
vidual may  decline  to  receive  letters  on  Monday.'  Local  petition  thus 
helps  the  work.  The  same  authority  says,  '  In  London  no  letters  are 
delivered  from  the  post-office  on  the  Lord's  Day,  nor  collected ;  and 
a  few  years  since,  when  a  proposal  was  made  that  there  should  be  a 
delivery,  it  was  met  with  such  opposition  from  merchants,  solicitors, 
general  traders,  and  from  every  class  in  society,  that  it  was  aban- 
doned.' " 

In  1840  met  a  "Bethel  and  Sabbath  Convention"  in 
Cincinnati. 

In  1842,  July  20  and  21,  a  convention  of  great  interest 
assembled  at  Rochester,  N.Y.  Three  hundred  delegates 
were  present.  Their  pamphlet  of  ninety-four  pages  con- 
tains letters  from  Seward,  Frelinghuysen,  and  Chancellor 
Walworth.  Mr.  Seward  wrote,  '*  I  need  not  assure  you 
that  every  day's  observation  and  experience  confirm  the 
opinion  that  the  ordinances  which  require  the  observance 
of  one  day  in  seven,  and  the  Christian  faith  which  hal- 
lows it  are  our  chief  security  for  civil  and  religious 
liberty,  for  temporal  blessings  and  spiritual  hopes." 

The  year  1844  was  prolific  of  conventions,  in  many 
states.  Dr.  Edwards  was  a  prime  mover.  He  was  Sec- 
retary American  and  Foreign  Sabbath  Union,  established 
in  1843.  J^ii-  10  and  ii,  the  Baltimore  Sabbath  Society 
had  a  meeting  addressed  by  Hon.  Willard  Hall.  They 
called  a  National  Convention,  which  met  at  Baltimore, 
Nov.  27  and  28.  John  Quincy  Adams  presided  ;  and  he 
remarked,  **  So  far  as  propagating  opinions  in  favor  of 
the  sacred  observance  of  the  Sabbath,  I  feel  it  to  be  my 
duty  to  give  all  the  faculties  of  my  soul  to  that  subject." 
Dr.  Edwards  was  present :  Chief  Justice  Hornblower, 
Walworth,  Frelinghuysen,  sent  letters.     The  pamphlet  of 


43^  HISTORICAL  SKETCH. 

eighty-two  pages  contains  an  Address  to  Railroad  Di- 
rectors, —  quoted  from  the  New-York  Sabbath  Conven- 
tion, —  also  to  canal  commissioners,  and  to  the  public. 

The  same  year,  earlier.  May  30  and  31,  met  a  State 
Convention  at  Harrisburg,  Va.,  in  the  Legislative  Cham- 
ber.    Dr.  Edwards  was  present. 

Aug.  28  and  29  assembled  the  New -York  State  Sabbath 
Convention  at  Saratoga  Springs.  President  Eliphalet 
Nott,  D.D.,  was  chairman ;  Dr.  Edwards  was  present. 

In  1846,  Feb.  10  and  11,  a  Sabbath  Convention  was 
held  in  Frankfort,  Ky.  Rev.  Drs.  Edwards,  and  Scudder 
of  India,  were  there. 

Two  years  later,  in  1848,  March  23  and  24,  an  Anti- 
Sabbath  Convention  met  in  Boston  at  the  Melodeon. 
The  call  was  from  Garrison,  the  Jackson s,  Parker,  and 
others.  Men  of  other  opinions  spoke.  They  opposed 
Sabbath  laws,  yet  their  address  says,  "A  day  of  rest  from 
bodily  toil,  both  for  man  and  beast,  is  not  only  desirable^ 
bnt  indispensable.  They  need  more,  and  must  have  more 
instead  of  less  rest.''  A  meeting  of  the  Free  Religious 
Association  in  1877  produced  four  addresses,  **  How  shall 
we  keep  Sunday  ?  " 

In  1857,  commenced  a  really  great  organization,  per- 
manent in  power  and  usefulness,  the  "New -York  Sabbath 
Committee,"  which  has  restrained  Sabbath  desecration 
in  New -York  City,  pursued  investigations  on  both  sides 
of  the  Atlantic,  and  published  valuable  documents.  F'or 
twenty-two  years  they  have  continued  their  *'  unobtrusive 
but  persevering  labors." 

A  similar  society,  the  "Maryland  Sabbath  Association," 
was  organized  in  1867.  Its  twelfth  report  shows  a  grand 
work  in  the  face  of  opposition. 

A  younger  organization  (1878),  the  ''International  Sab- 
bath Association "  of  Philadelphia,  has  the  motto,  "  Or- 
ganization, Co-operation,  Devotion,  and  Continuance." 


HISTORICAL  SKETCH.  437 

In  1863,  Aug.  II,  12,  and  13,  a  National  Convention  met 
at  Saratoga  Springs.  Nearly  all  the  loyal  States  were 
represented.  Norman  White,  Esq.,  Hon.  G.  H.  Stuart, 
and  Hon.  William  E.  Dodge  made  addresses.  Valuable 
papers  were  presented:  by  Dr.  Schaff,  **The  Anglo- 
American  Sabbath;"  by  Willard  Parker,  M.D.,  ''The 
Sabbath  in  its  Physiological  Relations  to  Man;"  by  Rev. 
H.  B.  Smith,  D.D.,  ''The  Philosophy  of  the  Sabbath;" 
and  by  Rev.  President  Mark  Hopkins,  D.D.,  "The  Sab- 
bath and  Free  Institutions." 

Then  follows  our  Massachusetts  Convention,  which,  we 
are  confident,  has  made  a  profound  and  powerful  impres- 
sion. We  fondly  believe  that  it  stands  massive  and  lofty 
as  a  Pharos.  The  crest  of  light  on  this  edifice  is  this 
volume,  which,  we  hope,  is  destined  to  take  rank  as  a 
superlative  contribution  to  Sabbath  literature. 

Two  composite  volumes  extant  have  value.  In  1862 
the  New -York  Sabbath  Committee  published  discourses, 
delivered  on  successive  Sabbath  evenings,  by  Rev.  Drs. 
Rice,  Hague,  Ganse,  Adams,  and  Vinton.  In  1850,  in 
Edinburgh,  a  composite  volume  was  prepared  by  Wardlaw, 
James,  Bickersteth,  and  others,  presenting  more  than 
twenty  Sabbath  themes.  Dr.  Chalmers  was  to  treat 
"The  Sabbath  and  Workingmen,"  but  his  decease  pre- 
vented. ''The  Influence  of  the  Sabbath  on  the  Piety  of 
Individuals"  was  illustrated  by  the  lives  of  Hale,  Edwards, 
Howard,  Wilberforce,  and  Chalmers. 

Such  were  these  conventions  whose  outcome  is  this 
volume.  Thankful  for  guidance,  mindful  of  conspicuous 
providences  which  remarkably  aided,  we  would  reverently 
inscribe,  as  Smeaton  at  the  base  of  Eddystone,  "  Except 
the  Lord  build  the  house,  they  labor  in  vain  that  build 
it."  May  it  shine,  to  the  glory  of  God  and  his  Sabbath, 
a  luminous  landmark  in  the  century  which,  for  weal  or 
woe,  stretches  out  before  America ! 


INDEX, 


Abyssinians,  148,  165. 

Abrogation,  10,  15,  17,  36,  38, 
42,  49,  50,  79,  80,  107,  136, 
140, 141,  143,  223/,  230,  235, 
237.  254,333,  372. 

Adamic,    16,    49,  96,  98,   188, 

Adfms,  J.  Q.,H.  S. 
America,    iic.,    260,  262-272, 

290,  302,  307,  345,  357. 
Anecdotes,  258,  310,  311,  316, 

346,  391 »  393,  397,  399,  407/, 
412,  415,  417,  420,  422,  424, 
428. 
Animals,  3,  10,  29,  40,  42,  97, 
loi,  113,  133,  158,  285,  344, 

Apocrypha,  201,  202,  207. 

Archelaus,  141. 

Arnheim,  109. 

Athanasius,  139. 

Atterbury,  W.^W.,  25-38,  401/, 

H.  S. 
Australia,  318. 
Austria,  259. 
Babylon,    126,  192,   196,  198, 

200. 
Bacon,  L.  W.,  D.D.,  307-317. 
Bagnall,  53. 

Bampt.  Lects.,  195,  381. 
Bankers,  367,  374,  385. 
Baring,  T.,  29,  367. 
Bavaria,  56. 
Baxter,  224,  255. 
Beecher,  L.,  68. 
Bellingham,  263. 
Bellows,  H.,  388. 
Bennett,  E.  H.,  H.  S. 
Berne  Cong.,  306,  321,  407. 
Bianconi,  40. 
Bible,  15,  37,  89. 
Birmmgham  Lib.,  329. 
Bismarck,  285,  379. 
Blackstone,  56. 
Book  of  Sports,  44. 
Boyhood,  5,  19,  355,  399,  427. 
Bushnell,  H.,  135. 
Butler,  Bp.,  135. 
Cabanis,  32. 
California,  42. 
Calvin,  252,  255,  256,  291. 
Canada,  31S,  420. 
Carver,  John,  177. 
Catholic,  259, 260, 331 ,  405, 406. 
Centennial    Exhib.,    40,    271, 
^H.  S. 
Celsus,  231. 
Change  of  Sab.,  80,  118,  214- 

237- 
Chaldeans,  26. 
Charles  II.,  40,  44. 

438 


Chicago, 61, 265, 269, 332,  343, 
Children,  20,  55,  58,  60,  b-j  f, 

177,  259,  286,  326,  337,  350, 
^  3.55,  397-400. 
China,  26,  31,  283. 
Christ,  10,  13,  17,  52, 112-123, 

150,  214. 
Christianity,  19,  66,   67,   214, 

232,  233,  237. 
Christophe,  Kg.,  146. 
Church,  18,  43,  270,  272,  275, 

.41?- 

Cincinnati,  269,  322,  343,  H.  S. 

Clark,  J.  S.,  178. 

Clement,  Alex.,  139,  142,  162, 
248. 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  42. 

Collyer,  R.,  387,388. 

Communism,  46,  61,  269,  378- 
380. 

Congress,  S.,  306,  321,  407. 

Constantine,  40,  148,  221,  238- 
246,  249. 

Continental  S.,  8,  36,  42,  54, 
59,  62,  257,  258,  259-261, 
267,  318,  330,  345,  406,  415, 

^349,  353- 

Conventions,  Pref.,  47,  393, 
394,  415,  H.  S._ 

Conventions,  Anti-Sabbath,  91 , 
H.  S. 

Cook,  J.,  39-46. 

Co-operation,  Sab.,  307,  407, 
419,  420. 

Corinth,  217,  226. 

Corporations,  332-341. 

Cotton,  263. 

Cox,  R.,  243. 

Creation  rest,  83,  84,  185,  195, 
396; 

Creation  day,  2,  3,  49,  50, 
8oy,  96,  112,  114,  120,  180, 
i82_/^  \Z$f,  195,  196,  205_/, 
236. 

Cunard  Line,  392. 

Curtius,  Prof.,  26. 

Cyprian,  248. 

Dale,  R.  W.,  72,  73,  135. 

Days  sacred  to  virtues,  145. 

Decalogue,  36,  50,  98, 134-136, 
140,  141,  151-153,  159,  '87, 
]83,  193,  223,  229,  235,  236, 

^323-    , 

Denmark,  260. 

Desecrations,  20,  43,  48,  57-59, 
92,  174,  175,  179,  193,  198/, 
251,  257,  258,  262,  263,  266, 
269,  277-279,  287,  318,  322, 
328,  329,  334,  335,  336,  337, 
338,  343,  344,  345/,  353,  359, 
366,  372,  393- 


De  Tocqueville,  64. 
Diet.  Chr.  Antiq.,  220. 
Dies  feriati,  26. 
Dionysius,  139,  162,  248. 
Dodge,   W.  E.,  342-356,  353, 

407/. 
"  Dominicum  servasti  ?  "  249. 
Domville,  W.,  243. 
Dupanloup,  406. 
Duponceau,  271. 
Durand,  J.,  353. 
Durbin,  Dr.,  258. 
Ebionites,  164. 
Ebrard,  85. 
Eden,    16,   49,   98,    188,    189, 

193,  196,  236. 
Edwards,  Justin,  H.  S. 
Egleston,  Prof.,  32. 
Egypt,  26,  190,  193,  196. 
Eight-hour  law,  309. 
Elisha,  157. 
Ellicott,  217,  220. 
Employers  and  employed,  20, 

42,    46,   48,    145,   154,   236, 

262,  264,  269,  286,  289,  336, 

348,365,  H.  S. 
Enemies  of  S.,  —  of  man,  43, 

61,  70,  92,97,  336. 
Engmeers,   28,  91,    346,    347, 

350,  425- 
England,  42,  56,  69,  275,  291, 

316,  318,  323,  324,  328. 
Europe,  57,  62,    247-261,   267, 

318,  321,  342,  343,  389,  406, 

415-. 
Eusebius,  92,  165,  221,  241. 
Excursions,  377,  394,  413-315, 

H.  S. 
Exodus,  105,  113,  192,  236. 
Family,   64-77,  66,  69,  71,  74, 

105,  365. 
Farmers,  103,  115,   203,   240, 

285. 
Farrar,  67. 
Farre,  R.,  29. 
Fathers,   119,   137,    139,    195, 

227,  230,  236. 
First   Day,  125,  143-155,  160, 

218. 
Fisher,  G.  P.,  137,  225. 
Fisher,  W.  L.,  245. 
Foreign    Pop.,   62,    266,   302, 

318-331. 
Fourth    Com.,    98,    105,    107, 

132-142, 144,  176,  195,  205, 

222,  231,  235,  236,  233,  247, 

422,  426,  427. 
Fowler,  M.  F.,  421-428,  H.  S. 
France,  8,  42,  56,  59,  146,  209, 

258,  264,  265,  304,  324,  327, 

329,  360,  377,  406. 


INDEX. 


439 


Freight-trains,  335,  344,  345, 
349.  350,  351,  352,  368,  393, 
H.  S. 

Frelinghuysen,  H.  S. 

Frencli  Revol.,  39,  58,  68, 145, 
360. 

"  Gathering  Sticks,"  109,  358. 

Gemara,  208. 

Geneva,  306,  320,  327,  407. 

Germany,  8,  33,  42,  254,  256, 
258,  260,  294,  312,  321-329, 
379,  406,  407. 

Gibbon,  238,  242. 

Gifford,  O.  P.,  412,  H.  S. 

Gilfillan,  68,  69. 

God,  64,  78,  83,  96,  112,  113, 
186,  188,  265,  356. 

Graetz,  209. 

Grant,  U.  S.,  390. 

Greek  Church,  259. 

Haegler,  27,  33,  34. 

Hall,  N.,  258. 

Hall,  W.,  H.  S. 

Hallam,  49. 

Hathorne,  423. 

Hawley,  J.  R.,  H.  S. 

Hegewisch,  126. 

Henr>s  P.,  56. 

Hessey,  J.,  140,  146,  195,  230. 

Hickey,  Y.,419,  H.  S. 

Hilary,  221. 

Hindoos,  26. 

Holiday  S.,  43,  44,  58,  59, 
262. 

Holland,  176,  260,  338. 

Home,  71,  73,  74,  76,  260,  358, 
365- 

Hopkins,  M.,  H.  S. 

Hopkins,  Prof.,  141. 

Hopkins,  S.,  265. 

Horse  Railroads,  335,  372, 
413.  421. 

Horses,  4,  10,  40,  422/. 

Humboldt,  W.,  28. 

Ignatius,  139,  227,  248. 

Instruction,  18,  19,  56,  105, 
116,   171,   253,  295,  296,  298 

^  f,   376,  397- 

Ireland,  40,  318. 

Irenseus,  139,  140,  235,  237, 
248. 

Italy,  56,    59,    259,    324,    327, 

^  329,  357- 

Japan,  8,  27,  31. 

Jews,  33,  130,  201-212,  295, 
406. 

Josephus,  201-207. 

Justin  Martyr,  128,  129,  162, 
207,  220,  228,  248. 

Laodicea,  140,  165. 

Lawrence,  A.  and  A.,  367, 
H.  S. 

Lawyers,  45,  56,  362,  374, 
H.  S. 

Legislation:  — 13,  39,  44,  gi, 
264,  269,  302,  315,  369;  de- 
fended, 35,  43,  45,  56,  269, 
281  y,  300  y,  412;  enforced, 
263,  264,  269.  I.  Civil: 
—  Am.,  Colon.,  263,  264, 
275;  Conn., 276-278;  Mass., 
278,  279,  H.  S. ;  N.  Y.,  279, 


280,   401  y,    403;     U.    S., 

276.  Constantine,  40,  240, 
249.  France,  29,  39,  145. 
Gt.  B.,  39,  44,  275,  291. 
Topics:  Ch.  attend.,  275; 
Civ.  Proc,  276-279;  Dis- 
turb. Worsh.,  279;  Diver- 
sions, 277-280,  H.  S.: 
Gambling,  277-280;  Hunt- 
ing, etc.,  279;     Intox.   Liq., 

277,  280,  401,  402,  413, 
H.  S.;  Labor,  277-2S0;  ALa- 
gistrates,277,279;  Merchan- 
dise, 277-2S0,  289,  H.  S.; 
Processions,  280,  404;  Sab- 
batarians, 212,  278-2S0; 
Travel,  277,  278,  280,  289. 
II.  Religious:  —  Chris- 
tz'ati,  Councils,  etc.,  162, 
164,  165,  217,  220,  254,  255. 
Mosaic,  38,  102-104,  108, 
114,  156  /.  Rabbinic,  no, 
114,  115,  132,  133,  203,  204. 

Leo  the  Great,  162. 
Letters,  365,  366,  416,  417. 
Liberty,   2,  42,   43,   269,   270, 

290,  330,  389,  418. 
Lightfoot,  217. 
Lincoln,  A.,  267. 
Literature  of  S.,  243. 
London,  54,  310,  323,  324,  H. 

Lord's  Day,  38,  84,  119,  124 
/,  130,  137,  i39>  154,  162, 
163-167,  174,  175,  179,  19s, 
213-218,  222,  232-234,  248, 
249,  357. 

Lord's  Supper,  139,  164,  174, 
2i6,  249. 

Luther,  252-256,  291,  323. 

Macaulay,  145,  309,  310. 

Maccabees,  202. 

Madagascar  Queen,  412. 

Madrid,  59. 

Magnesians,  224. 

Mails,  Eng.,  367,  368,  420, 
H.  S.;  U.S.,  263,  367,  36S, 
420,  H.  S. 

Man,  3,  16,  29,  30,  32,  42,  49, 
88,  89,  90,  97,  102,  113,  115, 
118,  120,  144,  154-158,  188, 
236,  285,  333. 

Manes,  141. 

Manna,  50,  100,  194. 

Manufacturers,  42,  46,  53,  73, 
144,  146,  263,  313,  333,  367, 
372,  377,  378. 

Markets,  209,  240-242. 

Mattathias,  202. 

McCheyne,  320. 

McMahon,  390. 

Melanchthon,  254. 

Merchants,  53,72,  73,  75,  144, 

,  289,  357/,  362-368,  374,  385. 

Metals,  32. 

Mexico,  57,  418. 

Michel  Chevalier,  28. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  42,  302. 

Milman,  209. 

Milwaukee,  322,  343. 

Mishna,  203-208. 

Missions,  411. 


Mohammedan,  27,  148,  155. 
Montalembert,  35,  53. 
Morals,  5,  15,  38,  42-46,  53-61, 

68,  258-260,  271,  272,  287, 
289,  295/,  325-328,  335-338, 
347,  360,  375,  381,  387,  389, 
396. 

Morton,  Sec,  176. 

Mosaic    law,    107,    135,    141, 

152,  154,  202,  234. 
Moses,  95,  98,  105,  120,   143, 

144,  205. 
Naville,  Ernest,  308. 
Neander,  162,  219. 
Nehemiah,  102,  103,  114,  201. 
New  England,  46,  47,  53,  56, 

69,  265,  275,  303,  305,  318, 
324-328,  330,  345,  354-356, 
395,  412. 

Newspapers,    263,     355,    356, 

365,  402,  413,  H.  S. 
New  York,  45,  154,  263,  269, 

279/,  330.  401. 
New- York  Sab.   Com.,  25,  28, 

401/,  H.  S. 
New  Zealand,  318. 
Niemeyer,  P.,  32. 
Noah,  99.  192. 
Norwajr,  260,  318. 
Obligation,  o,  38,  51,  65,  143—      » 

155,  323,  371,  426. 
Observance,    36,    38,    59,    89, 

103,  107,  108,  no,  113,  114, 

122,  123,  124,  132,  133,  208- 

224,   247,    264  /,.  385,    391, 
^  395,  407/. 
Ochsenbein,  30. 
Origen,  139,  219,  238. 
Owen,  J.,  178. 
Paley,  W.,  192. 
Paris,  42-44,  50,  68,  258,  307, 

318- 
Parker,  \V.,  30,  H.  S. 
Patriarchal    S.,   98,   100,    187, 

191-196. 
Paul,  124-142,  226. 
Pentecost-Day,    51,    119,    148, 

160,  161,  162,  218,  219,  233, 

236. 
Periodic  rest,  41,  42,  125-138. 
Perman.    elems.,    15,    35,    37, 

49,  52,  65,  80,  84,  94,  97,  98, 

100,  120,  121,  135,  136,  139, 

142,    143,    153,    156  /,    168, 

i69y",  186, 189, 194, 195, 196, 
^235/,  237, 321,333,372. 

Perpetuity,  10,  15,  35-37,  49, 
98,  120,'  121,  136,  143,  159, 
169  f,  186,  189,  194,  196, 
235/,  237,  321,  333,  372. 

Persians,  26. 

Pharaoh,  194. 

Pharisees,  110-115,  132,  133, 
V.  Legislation. 

Philo,  201-206. 

Physicians,  29,  30,  34,  53,  361, 
368,  370,  371,  H.  S. 

Pilgrims,  5,  11,  176,  262,  328. 

Pius  IX.,  406. 

Pliny,  162,  220. 

Plumb,  A.  H.,  384/,  H.  S. 

Plumptre,  35,  219,  220. 


440 


INDEX. 


Polycarp,  229. 

Pompey,  202, 

Polaftd,  259. 

Portugal,  259. 

Pre-mosaic,  144,  185-195,  196. 

Prentice,  Prof.,  258. 

Protestant   Europe,   261,  292, 

330.  396,  405- 
Proudhon, 28, 32,  33, 147,  259. 
Ps.  xcii.,  157,  165,  221. 
Ptolemy  Lagus,  202. 
Pulpit,  294,  298,  354. 
Puritans,    11,    145,   176,   256, 

327,  386,  397,  399,  405,  421. 
Pythagoras,  32. 
Rabbis,  201-210. 
R.  Roads,  28,  42,  43,  263,  335, 

337,342-356,  36S,  378,  393, 

419,  420,  425,  427,  H.  S. 
Redemption-rest,  3,  83  y,  118, 

121,  159,  181,  229,  233,  236. 
Reformers,  247,  252-256,  291. 
"  Remember,"  &c.,  7,  50,  79, 

86,  150,  170,  276,  420. 
Rest,  4,  12,  15,  17,  26,  52,  71, 

81,  86,  103,   144,   158,   171, 

212,  292,  396. 
Resurrection-day,  11,  51,  118, 

135,  148,  150,  154,  160,  162, 

218,  219,  221,  224,  233,  248. 
Rice,  W.  (Springfield) ,  247-61. 
Robertson,  F.  W.,  34,  35. 
Robinson,  E.  G.   (Providence, 

R.I.),  290-305. 
Rome,  66,  138,  202,  227,  249, 

250. 
Russia,  154,  259,  379. 
Sabbath,  Synopsis:  — 

1.  Sources  of  Study. — 
Sc,  4, 15,  passim  ;  O.  T., 
50,  95-111,  151,^156  /, 
xgdf;  Apoc,  v.  ;  Septua., 
v.;  N.  T.,  51,  112-142, 
i6oy,  2i4_/.*  Nature,  15, 
25-94,  &c. :  Society,  47- 
63,  273, /•■  Family,  64-77, 
&c. :  Stale,  273/.-  Hist., 
4,7,45,46,  185-272,  304; 
Fr.  Revol.,  &c. 

2.  Forms.  —  Sab.  proper,  v. 
O.  T. :  v.  Lord's  Day. 

3.  Commemorative,  —  v. 
Creation,  Exod.,  Resur- 
rection, Pentecost. 

4.  Periods.  —  t>.  Creation, 
Adam,  Eden,  Patriarchs, 
Pre.-Mos.,  O.  T.,  95-111, 
151,  156/.-  N.  T.,  112- 
142,  \baf,i\\f:  V.  Re- 
demption. Sabbatismos: 
Celestial,  14,  195. 

5.  Modes. — v.  Patriarchal: 
Jewish,  95-111, 196/",  156- 
i6o,  224^",  248:  Rabbinic, 
V.  and  Talm.  Mishna: 
Christian,  11,  i6oy,  216^ 
234,  248/",  286  /:  Ameri- 
can, 44-46,  47_/,  260-272, 
275/,  291,  318/,  345,  353: 
Continental,  v.  and  Fr., 


Germ.,    Mex.,    &c. ;     v. 
Parisian. 

6.  Beneficiaries.  —  z/.  Ani- 
mals, Horses,  Man,  Ser- 
vants, Workingmen,  Em- 
ployees, Woman,  Chil- 
dren. 

7.  Uses.  —  v.  Rest,  Fami- 
ly, Convocation,  104,  171: 
V.  Worship,  Instruction, 
Good  Works,   11,   116  _/, 

171,  173- 

8.  Man's  Reception.  —  v. 
Observance,  Desecration. 

9.  Effects. — Health,  15, 
25-38,  40/,  53,  &c.:  In- 
telligence, V.  Instruction: 
Freedom,  42,  291,  v.  Lib- 
erty: V.  Aloral,  Econom- 
ic, 39/,  53,  &c. 

10.  Testimonies. — v.  Phy- 
sicians, Merchants,  Man- 
ufacturers, Tradesmen, 
Workingmen,  Engineers, 
R.R.-men,  Statesmen. 

11.  Duration.  —  v.  Per- 
man.  Elems.,  Oneness,  36, 
98,  139,  &c. :  Authority, 
10,  17,  65,  120-122,  222, 
232,  237,  253;  V.  Obliga- 
tion: V.  Abrogation,  Per- 
petuity. 

12.  Divine  and  Human. — 
Relig.,  44,  48,  55, 289, 307 : 
Civil,  44,  48,  273/,   289, 

307- 

13.  Guardians.  —  Good 
men,  13,  47,  62,  246,  268, 
317:  Church,  43,  47,  62, 
268,  270,  330,  337,  341: 
V.  Pulpit,  Legislation. 

14.  Characterized.  —  2, 
15-20,  43,  46,  47,  49,  50, 
51,  53,  54,  63,  66,  69,  71, 
76,  80,  81,  86,  93,  96,  105, 
168,  iSo,  268,  272. 

Sabbath  evid.  of  revel.,  90. 
"  Sab.  made  for  man,"  38,  49, 

52,  71,   122,  151,   188,  306- 

428. 
Sabbath   school,   20,   60,  300, 

385,  397,  400,  413. 
St.  Louis,  343. 
Sanctuary,  5,  11,  18,  56,  104, 

157, .158,.  17^,  387-389,  400- 
Scandinavians,  26. 
Scotland,  56,  69,  178,  256,  231, 

316,  318,  323. 
Schaff,  P.,  64,  267,  H.  S. 
Servants,  3,  97,  loi,  105,  106, 

113,  158,  248,  285,  289,  328. 
Seven,  septenary,  26,  31,  32, 

93,  99,    136,  144,    189,   190, 

191,  206,  207,  391. 
"  Seven  days'  work,"  &c.,  145, 

330,  357,  362. 
Seventh-day    men,    124,   132, 

137,  143-155,  161,  223,  245. 
Seward,  H.  S. 
Shepard,  T.,  12. 


Sinai,  4,  50,  97,  98,  132,  136, 

144,  151,  187,  194,  197,223, 

226,  333,  395. 
Smith,  G.,  43-389. 
Smith,  B.  Diet.,  126,  147,  219. 
Smith,  H.  B.,  II.  S. 
S.  America,  57,  190. 
Sozomen,  241. 
Spain,  56,  59,  69,  259,  357. 
Spencer,  H.,  388. 
Spring,  G.,  374. 
Stanley,  165. 
Statesmen,  144-147,  285,  306, 

326,  391,  H.  S. 
Steamboats,   48,  91,  262,   266, 

269,  334,  337,  342,  393. 
Stockholders,      341-348,    356, 

394,  421. 
Strong,  W.,  Pref.,  306. 
Siurg.s,    R.,    jun.,     357-369, 

H.  S. 
Stuyvesant,  264. 
Sumner,  C,  391. 
Sweden,  260,  318. 
Switzerland,  8,   42,    260,  306, 

318,  320,321,   407. 
Talmud,  132,  208. 
Ten-hour  law,  145,  309. 
Tenth-day   Sab.,   29,  68,  145, 

360.  _ 
Tertullian,  135,  138,  139,  162, 

221,  229,  248. 
Theatres,    91,    324,   330,   401, 

402. 
Theodoret,  164. 
Thomas,  R.,  318-331. 
Tradesmen,    73,    75,   91,   209, 

372. 
Trajan,  220. 

Troas,  26,  125,  128,  129,  226. 
Vanderbilt,  W.  H.,  350. 
Venice,  59,  258. 
Von  Schulte,  260. 
Wales.  318. 
War,  Rebellion,  267;    Revol., 

264;   1812,  265. 
War,  &c.,  no,  ^oif,  207,210, 

241,  267. 
Washington,  45,  390. 
Watts,  146,  178,  383. 
Week,  26,  190,  234. 
Whately,  36,  134,  135. 
Wilberforce,  146. 
Wilkinson,  26. 
Winthrop,  J.,  263. 
Woman,  20,  55,  58,  59,  (>(>/, 

258,  259,  326. 
Wood,    W.    C,     Pref.,     366, 

Hist.  Sk.,  Index. 
Wordsworth,  Bp.,  148. 
Workingman,  10,  20,  29,   30, 

41-46,  53,  57,  70,  72,  73,  89, 

90,  91,  97,  120, 145, 146, 240, 

246,  248,  285,  289,  307,  309, 

310,    311,    336,    359,    370/, 

378,  379,  413,  425,  428. 
Worship,  5,  II,  12,  18,  55,  74, 

8i_/,  103,  105,  157,  160,  174, 

179,  181,  191,  253,  285,  297, 

386. 


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